New details obtained via the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) shed some more light on this topic. This will be costing our district approximately $40,000. The discussions with PACE took place before contracts were sent out to staff, but the announcement was made after those contacts were sent. It’s possible (likely?) that contracts may have been signed and returned before the announcement was made.
Yet another large expenditure of taxpayer money made behind closed doors and without stakeholder input.
The May 10th Woodland Park RE-2 school board meeting was absolutely crazy. With schools earlier being on ‘shelter in place’ status due to a tornado warning (later downgraded to a tornado watch), a record crowd still turned up for this meeting. An hour ahead of the meeting’s 6PM start time, there was already an estimated 90 people in line (doors typically open 30 minutes prior)! I showed up just after 5:00, found some friends, and we very quickly ascertained what was going on. The common thread with the people we saw and talked to was a connection with Charis Bible school. We all gathered in a huge line, waiting in the rain for the doors to open.
But I need to take a step back…why the fuss? We knew that in this meeting, the board would vote to extend Ken Witt’s contract for another year, and change his job title from Interim Superintendent to Superintendent. The crowd was not there for that though…the board had caught wind that NBC Nightly News was sending a camera and crew to cover this meeting. A Fox21 reporter was told that a board member had told the Charis students to come (by the time of the meeting, I’d estimate about 200 people had showed up). That NBC camera crew was joined by cameras and reporters from two local TV stations, KOAA and Fox21 (follow those links for their stories of the evening).
What followed was…unprecedented for this small town.
So, the board knew to expect a crowd. The main conference room, the planned location for this meeting, had a 90 person capacity. In the past, they’d often open up overflow rooms, other conference rooms in the same office, where those people watched the livestream on TV. Larger past meetings have been held in the Middle School commons room, or the High School auditorium (which is the building adjoining the district offices hosting this meeting).
Given the anticipated record crowd, what would you expect the WPSD RE-2 board of education to do? This board chose to handle that crowd by, for the first time ever, reducing capacity and limiting participation to only the 90 people that could fit in the main conference room. Once those people had entered the building, the doors were locked with around a hundred people waiting outside in the rain.
While refusing to open the overflow rooms, move to the adjacent auditorium, or even reschedule the meeting, the board allowed people outside to sign up for public comment, though those people still had to wait outside to see if their names would be called (this board chose to limit public comment to 3 minutes per person which is fine, but only 30 minutes total, so typically a LOT of people do not get a chance to speak). Sometime around the middle of public comment, the board opened the doors to the high school for people who wanted to seek shelter from the rain in there (it’s still not clear why we couldn’t enter one of the vacant other conference rooms in the district office).
The meeting moved into executive session at the end; this is done in private and most of the audience shuffled out. At that point, myself and other parents were able to escape the rain and go inside to await the board’s return from executive session (they need to return to the conference room to officially adjourn the meeting). We had the chance for a brief interaction with board president Rusterholtz after the meeting (the others all fled immediately after the meeting was adjourned, none of them would talk to us).
The board put on a show for the cameras…rants about socialism, capitalism, prayer, guns, etc. They passed a resolution about economic freedom, and of course approved Witt’s contract.
At the 26:55 mark, you can hear Rusterholtz ask Kelly how many people signed up, she said 30 had. 9 were given the chance to speak and be heard.
My first stab at writing about this topic ended up being a bit long – read it here – so I thought I’d try to do a better job of summarizing this (see that link for source material for data here)
Transportation Costs in Woodland Park RE-2 School District – ’22-23 school year
Expenses
$1,563,177
Source of funds to cover expenses
Carryover fund balance from RE-2 previous year: $104,758
Transportation fees collected from parents: $20,000 ($50 per kid)
State Reimbursement: $235,000
Grants: $1,000
Money to be used from RE-2 General Fund: $1,202,419
The point here is, the bulk of the money comes from the RE-2 General Fund – and Merit Academy is not being required to share that portion of the cost when they participate in this program next year.
It’s worth doing a deeper dive into enrollment numbers, as it’s something this board likes to frequently tout. We’ll set aside for now whether the quality of a school district should be judged by enrollment…and just evaluate this statistic.
The Claim
BOE has increased enrollment by ~15% for the ’22-23 school year
The Vedict: misleading
District enrollment did indeed increase 15.8% in ’22-23 compared to ’21-22.
Digging Deeper:
In the ’21-22 school year, Merit kids were not counted as being in Woodland Park RE-2, they were legally part of ERBOCES (their status was Contract School).
Merit kids were going to school in town in ’21-22, but not counting towards district numbers. Hence, the big jump when they were then reclassified as WPSD as a charter school.
If we count Merit students as always being part of WPSD, the numbers are:
’21-22 school year: 3.1% increase in enrollment (the first year Merit opened)
’22-23 school year: 0.14% increase in enrollment
Given the chaotic COVID time and nationwide shift in population to more rural areas during that time, it’s impossible to say if that 3.1% increase was due to Merit or just nationwide trends.
The claim that district enrollment increased 15% this past school year is misleading, it uses a shell game to inflate numbers.
A small school district in Colorado has implemented a gag order on teachers, dropped most mental health support for next year, and adopted social studies standards previously rejected by the state board of education. It’s all happened in the past three months, and it’s caused upheaval in the community. But school board and district leaders say the path they’re on will lead to better academic outcomes. It’s an example of a somewhat new phenomenon in which politics and political issues become part of school boards. CPR education reporter Jenny Brundin takes a closer look.
— Read on www.cpr.org/show-segment/where-school-boards-and-politics-meet/
FOX21 spoke with multiple members in line from the Charis Bible College who all said they had no relation to the school district but that they were there to support the school board.
“I don’t really care what’s happening very much… I’m really advocating for peace and unity,” said Tanner Wride, a member of the Charis Bible College.
The teacher pipeline is no longer leaking. With enrollment in traditional teacher education programs declining nationwide in the past few years, it is drying up at an alarming rate.
As the nation grapples with the profound effects these challenges have on school communities, the term “learning loss” has made its way into the spotlight. This term is commonly used in stories detailing what children across America lost during remote learning. It focuses primarily on how students have fallen behind in core academic areas such as reading and math, which is of course a critical issue. The trouble is, the term doesn’t represent the complexity of what students, families and school communities experience with teacher turnover.
— Read on www.edsurge.com/news/2023-05-05-what-s-lost-when-a-teacher-leaves-a-school
If you heard of a corporation that had secret meetings, non-disclosure of public documents, and a company policy that included a gag order for employees’ personal social media, you might say “wow, that’s a pretty toxic environment.” Now…suppose you found out it was actually a school district? Shocking, right? Well, not so much these days.
We are talking about the very real Woodland Park, Colorado school district, where the interim superintendent, despite being recalled as a member of a board of education elsewhere, was the ONLY candidate considered. Where administrators and teachers are leaving in droves. Where a charter school has been placed in the middle school building, causing the sixth grade to be moved-without a discussion with building principals or teachers.
And where the Records Custodian-the person who handles all of the Open Records Requests-was unceremoniously terminated. Strangely, after he voiced objections to some of the less-than-open practices of the District, including instructing him to not fulfill requests.
We spoke to Logan Ruths, the former records custodian for Woodland Park, and Matt Gawlowski, parent/activist and developer of the “Support Woodland Park Schools” website. It’s a story you don’t want to skip.
