Last week:

• This was of course the big election week. After around six months of campaigning, Seth Bryant, Mike Knott, and Keegan Barkley faced maybe the worse part, waiting for results. The evening started out on a positive note with all three ahead by small margins, though the last update of the day, shortly before Midnight, showed that only Keegan held her lead. Both Mike and Seth were trailing. Another update Thursday afternoon increased the deficit a small amount. The gap is close enough that we need to see how the ballot curing process goes, and how many mail-in military ballots may yet be received. Read more about the election at:
  • Colorado Public Radio
  • Colorado Times Recorder
  • NBC News
• Wednesday’s board meeting was uneventful and quick. With Illingworth training Keegan Barkley by quite a bit, he took advantage of the opportunity to say goodbye to the board.

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

• The county clerk is working on curing ballots (contacting people where a ballot was rejected for some reason), and there could still be some mail-in military ballots on the way. Both of those have until either 11/15 or 11/16 to be completed. Once that’s done, if either matches have less than a .5% margin of victory, an automatic recount will be triggered. Otherwise, we can expect the winners of the school board race to be announced.
• The Ute Pass BOCES is putting on an informational meeting for parents, about special ed in the district. This Wednesday, 6PM, at the Ute Pass Cultural Center.
• Even if Bates and Kimbrell hold on to their seats, there is some reason for optimism. Ken Witt’s contract is up next June, and I’m already hearing rumors from other front range districts that he’s likely to leave this town and join one of those larger districts.

Last week:

• The big news last week was the WPEA’s victory over the school district, getting staff’s freedom of speech restored in a new, revised policy KDDA. Read more at:
  • Colorado Public Radio
  • KOAA (this story included a short video segment with a creepy response by superintendent Ken Witt at about 1:10 in the video)
  • Denver Post
  • Colorado Springs Gazette
• Rocky Mountain PBS published a story about Woodland Park.
• Many more letters to the editor, here and here.

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

• VOTE! Ballots must be received by 7PM on November 7th. Do NOT mail them, it’s too late for that (except that military or overseas civilian mail ballots must be postmarked by November 7th, and received by November 15th).
  • Vote in-person at the Woodland Park Public Library. Open Monday 9AM-5PM, and Tuesday 7AM-7PM.
  • 24-hour drop boxes are located at:
    • Teller County Clerk and Recorder’s Branch Office, 800 Research Dr., Suite 200, Woodland Park, CO 80863
    • Teller County Courthouse (near sidewalk by parking lot), 101 W. Bennett Ave., Cripple Creek, CO 80813
    • Divide Marketplace (near right side of the entrance), 11115 Hwy 24, Divide, CO 80814
  • You can check on the status of your ballot by signing up on Ballottrax.
  • Teller County is publishing a list of names of people who have returned the first, incorrectly printed ballot, but have NOT yet returned a correctly printed ballot. If your name is on that list and you have questions about this, you can go to the in-person voting location at the library and the people there can help.
  • So far, 5,772 out of 19,763 ballots have been received so far. Not all of these are in the Woodland Park school district (I think roughly 3/4 are).
• There is a regularly scheduled board meeting Wednesday, 6:00PM, in the district office conference room (the usual place). The new board, whatever that ends up being, will NOT be sworn in at this time as the vote needs to be certified.

Last Week:

• You should have received your corrected/reprinted ballot by now. If not, go vote in-person at the library some time this week.
• There were lots of letters to the editor in local papers this week. Today in the Gazette, and earlier in the week in the Courier (they only printed a few but made others available online).
• I had a chance to dig into a couple of the Independent Expenditure Committees that have been sending mailers and text messages and learned some interesting things. Read more about Teller County for School Choice, and Citizens for a Vibrant Woodland Park.
• Garfield RE-2 school district came close to being the second in Colorado (and the nation) to adopt the American Birthright Standards for social studies. They implemented a process involving community input, which resulted in those standards being rejected. Meanwhile, implementation of American Birthright in Woodland Park continues, with course curriculums unfinished and NCAA review pending.
• Ads for the awesome challengers (Bryant, Barkley, Knott) were made available on YouTube if you want to share those.

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

• VOTE!!!
  • Turn in your ballot in person if you can’t get it in the mail by Monday 10/30.
  • Ballots must be received by 11/7.

Last Week:

• The ballot you received was probably incorrect! The printer screwed up and mailed almost 15,000 incorrect ballots to voters in Teller County. You’ll know it’s wrong if it doesn’t have the school board races on there. New ballots were being mailed last Friday. Read more here.
• I wonder if the Courier has ever seen so many people submit Letters to the Editor? Read a few of the latest here.
• I wanted to learn more about Mick Bates, and was surprised at what I found.
• The WPHS students held their forum for school board candidates Saturday in the public library. A packed room listened to Knott, Bryant, and Barkley field questions from students only (the three incumbents did not attend). This was the fifth candidate forum for this school board race, yet a couple community members are working to possibly organize a sixth(!) forum. They have very little time to pull this off, but they’re trying to structure this in a way that would finally get all six candidates in the same room at the same time.
• Colorado Public Radio published a story about school board races to watch in Colorado.
• The Gazette published an article about the packed board meeting from 10/11, which once again reached capacity and turned people away at the door.

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

• Reprinted ballots should hit our mailboxes in the first part of the week.
• Will there be a sixth candidate forum? I’d place the odds at 50/50.
• The next board meeting is scheduled for the day after the election November 8th (they’re normally scheduled on the second Wednesday of the month like this).

Last Week:

• The board meeting on Wednesday 10/11 drew the Charis students out in force; their sudden interest in school board meetings meant a few dozen people were locked out of the meeting as the room reached capacity. With the preceding week featuring the letter of protest signed by 81 staff members, several community members had reached out to the board to ask that the 10/11 meeting be moved to one of the larger venues used for some board meetings in the past. The board chose not to do so. If you missed the meeting, you can watch it here.
  • 33 people signed up to speak during the public comment session; only 15 were given the opportunity to be heard.
  • Watch KOAA’s coverage of that meeting.
• The teacher press conference from the previous Thursday, where they read the letter signed by 81 staff members, drew more coverage in the press. Here are some links: 9News, CBS Colorado
• The district released a statement regarding the teachers speaking out, and also sent an email to parents. You can read them here.
• Monday the 9th was the night of competing candidate forums, with the incumbents choose the district one, and the challengers choosing the one put on by the Woodland Park Chamber of Commerce. If you missed the chamber forum, you can view it here. The district has not made available a recording of their forum.
• The community has learned that many high school classes still have not been reviewed for NCAA eligibility.
• The Woodland Park High School students announced more details of their upcoming forum on 10/21 (10:00, in the public library). No word yet on how many of the six candidates will be attending. This is a student-led forum with questions only accepted from students, but it’s open to the public.
• What kind of leader did the board choose for our district? You can watch Ken Witt talk to staff from back in March in this video.
• Logan Davis wrote many articles about our district, and appeared on a new podcast here.
• Read the letters to the editor for the Courier, and also this guest column.
• The board chose people to be on the SAC and DAC committees.
• Woodland Park School District has been in the news a ton lately…here’s a summary of the stories from some of the larger news organizations which have done deeper dives into these stories.

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

• Ballots are being mailed out Monday!

I haven’t published weekly updates for a couple weeks now…because the school district has been pretty quiet, with all the focus on campaigns for the three out of five school board seats up for grabs. Here’s what’s been going on:

Last week(s):

• Here’s an update on the candidate forums. Note that WPHS were refused their request to hold a forum jointly organized and moderated by WPHS and Merit students.
• Here’s a timeline of events related to all these candidate forums.
• Thursday was a big day for teachers and staff in this district, with 81 of them signing a letter and many speaking out to media at an event at the Ute Pass Cultural Center. They’re doing this knowint’ it’s in violation of district policy and could get them fired (like what happened to Mary Ward last March). More covered at KKTV, Colorado Sun, Colorado Public Radio, KRDO, Fox21
• KKTV looked at school security in local districts. In Colorado Springs, they found districts willing to talk about the training their school security receive…in Woodland Park, they were met with silence and an unwieldiness to share any information.
• The Courier published some new letters to the editor (link, link, link)
• Contrary to what our board says, enrollment in our district is on the decline, and did not see any boost as claimed. Read the numbers here. The data for the current school year won’t be official for a few more weeks, but the latest numbers are already lower than original estimates from August.
• Here’s a summary of the fundraising results for all six candidates. Seth Bryant, Mike Knott, and Keegan Barkley are out-raising the incumbents, despite having a significantly smaller average donation size.
• The Colorado Sun featured an opinion piece about our district, written by Diane Carmen.
• Read this guest column from candidate Mike Knott.

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

• Monday, 10/9, is a busy day in town. There are two candidate forums (incumbents at Columbine at 6PM, challengers at the cultural center at 5:30PM), plus the Academic Awards Night at the High School (6PM).
• The last school board meeting before the election is this Wednesday, 10/11, at 6:00PM (read the agenda here). They’ve decided to hold this meeting in the district conference room, which only seats about 90 people. This means that if the 81 staff members who spoke out against this board want to attend this meeting, they won’t all be able to, there won’t be enough space. The only action item in the agenda is for the board to pick the members of the SAC and DAC committees.

Last Week:

• If you missed the 9/13 board meeting, you can watch it here. The livestream had audio issues at the beginning, but they were resolved quickly so jump ahead until you can hear it.
• The district reminded everyone on social media that today is Constitution Day.
• A summary of public info about the *three* school board candidate forums can be read here.
• One of the district’s four lawsuits (the WPEA one) will be going to mediation this month.
• Read a great opinion piece about the WPEA free speech lawsuit.
• School Board candidate Keegan Barkley wrote a guest column in the Courier that’s worth reading.
• The Freedom From Religion Foundation published their review of the American Birthright standards (which WPSD adopted last January).
• Learn more about the money flowing from the district to Merit Academy here.
• Colorado Times Recorder published an in-depth look at Andrew Wommack and Charis.
• Colorado Times Recorder published their latest article about Woodland Park schools. Reporter Logan Davis has done a great job of providing a factual account and as with the other articles he’s written, this is a must-read.
• Independent Expenditure committees are starting to get involved in our election..read about one here.
• The CORA process has felt slow at times…but we finally have preliminary enrollment numbers for this school year! The official count will be October 2nd, these numbers really are just preliminary.

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

• I’m hoping we can get some clarity about those three different candidate forums, especially the two overlapping ones. Stay tuned!

Last Week:

• We dug up some info on Mindsight, the mental health counseling company the district is partnering with, and wrote about it here.
• There are interesting links when you dig into the company Bates and Illingworth are using for (presumably) voter information. They’re one of Truth and Liberty Coalitions ‘influencers’.
• Andrew Wommack Ministries responded to Logan Davis’ recent article, read their response here.
• The Courier published a letter to the editor about our schools.
• We did a little fact checking on another letter to the editor claiming the unions supplied vans to the challengers (verdict: FALSE).
• The Braver Angels group had a large turnout at their meeting at the library, focused on targeting divisiveness.
• Seth Bryant, Mike Knott, and Keegan Barkley held a fundraising dinner at the Ute Pass Cultural center last Friday. A large number of people showed up and had a great time!

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

• School board meeting Wednesday, 6:00, district conference room. Agenda here (livestream link in the agenda). Public comment has been moved to after the ‘actions’ section.

Last Week:

• We reported on the changes to the sixth graders’ libraries.
• Rob Rogers (Colorado Springs) posted a great TikTok video about the conflict in education.
• The CDE published their preliminary school performance ratings. Our five traditional public schools all scored green (‘performance plan’); Merit Academy was rated yellow (‘improvement plan’) due to a test participation percentage lower than the state goal.

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

• This Friday, Bryant, Knott, and Barkley are hosting a fundraising dinner at the Cultural Center to support their school board election campaigns.
• It’s a short week for students, who get Monday and Tuesday off!
• Next school board meeting is Wednesday, 9/13.
• I’m still trying to get school enrollment numbers from the district via CORA. Merit Academy was very helpful with this request; Ken Witt’s organization has not been as forthcoming.

Last Week:

• The Courier published a guest column from board candidates Seth Bryant.
• The Colorado Times Recorder published another in-depth article looking at our town, this one focusing on the influence of Andrew Wommack.
• Federal funding is being used to help teachers buy school suppliers…read about it here.
• On the first day of school, members of the Gideons were handing out New Testaments outside schools.
• Bates, Kimbrell, and Illingworth turned the back to school nights into a campaigning opportunity.
• This year’s convocation (all-hands staff meeting) broke with tradition and instead of a pep rally type of feel, staff got to listen to Ken Witt and Brad Miller. Miller talked about the new district policy addressing transgender and LGBTQ kids. Read more here.
• The district updated its logo to remove the ‘A Place of Becoming’ tagline.

Here’s what’s coming up next week:

• I’m working to get enrollment numbers. Official numbers won’t come out until October, but I think we’re all curious what’s going on with this.