4/9/2023 Weekly Update

Last Week:

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

  • The board has a scheduled their regular board meeting for this Wednesday, 6:00, in the district offices. Read the agenda here. Updates will be provided on redistricting, academic achievement, and the middle school reconfiguration.

Grant info for the ’23-24 school year, compared to previous

I’ve been working to better understand what effect refusing grant money will have on our district (see this story). New data has been received via CORA, all grant applications for the ’23-24 school year as of 4/2/2023 (links to applications are included). I’m not sure if programs like the Title 1A funding would be secured later in the year; it’s possible the actual ’23-24 grant picture will have additional funds added beyond what’s shown here.

WPSD grant applications, ’23-24 School Year:

For comparison, WPSD grants, ’22-23 School Year:

  • Newmont CC/V Goldmine Grant – Bldg Level Educational Programs ($ 47,017)
  • Summit Elem. NLK Security Grant – Bldg Security ($ 2,019)
  • Project Lead The Way HS-Lockheed Martin – HS PLTW ($ 2,200)
  • Child Care Relief Grant – Preschool ($ 7,772)
  • Colo. Ed. Initiative SERN Grant – Social Emotional Redesign Network ($ 15,413)
  • Jadenator Donation Grant – Student Needs-Athletics ($ 2,150)
  • CDHS Child Care Oper Stabil Grant – After School Care ($ 60,688)
  • Colo. Health Foundation – Student Wellness ($ 11,376)
  • CDHS Workforce Sustain – After School Care ($ 13,144)
  • Local Donations/some Dist. funds – Auditorium Upgrade ($ 55,000)
  • School Counselor Corp Grant – Counseling ($ 489,989)
  • State Library Grant – School Libraries ($ 5,000)
  • School Health Professionals Grant – Cohort 5 (Elem) – Substance Abuse Prevention ($ 266,618)
  • School Health Professionals Grant – Cohort 6 (Sec) – Sustance Abuse Prevention ($ 216,786)
  • WPHS Advanced Placement Pilot Program – HS AP ($ 4,558)
  • Career Development Incentive Programs – HS Instructional ($ 32,944)
  • Kindergarten Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment – Kndg. Fixed Assets ($ 19,485)
  • Read Act Grant – Literacy ($ 53,409)
  • AP Exam Fee Reimbursement – AP Exams ($ 1,500)
  • Concurrent Enrollment – Concurrent Enrollment ($ 10,000)
  • WPHS SWAP – School to Work alliance Program ($187,606)
  • Suicide Prevention Grant – Suicide Prevention ($ 5,000)
  • URHN-Substance Abuse Prevention Grant – Sustance Abuse Prevention ($ 169,999)
  • Title IA – Language Arts and Math ($ 401,234)
  • Carl Perkins Consorsium – Vocational ($ 11,115)
  • Title III ELL flow Through – ELL ($ 4,151)
  • Title IIA (combined with Title IV for budgeting) – Instructional Resource ($ 92,846)
  • Title IV (combined with Title IIA for budgeting) – Combined with Title IIA ($ 25,133)
  • Supply Chain Assistance Grant, School Food Svc. – School Food Service ($ 32,178)
  • Summit Elem. Distinctive Schools Award – Title I Educational Program ($ 10,000)

Also in the ’22-23 school year were federal Covid relief funds; these are expiring on their own so I’m separating them out:

  • ESSER 3 Grant (Instr Impact) – Covid Pandemic ($ 320,436)
  • ESSER 2 Grant – Covid Pandemic ($ 306,592)
  • ESSER 3 Grant – Covid Pandemic Loss of Learning ($ 1,173,946)

Regarding those ESSER funds, the district’s Use of Funds Plan for that money can be viewed here (thanks to CORA).

Update on Middle School / 6th grade changes

In the board meeting on Wednesday, April 12th, Ken Witt will be providing an update on the changes to the middle school, moving sixth grade down to the elementary school buildings and reconfiguring the remaining space to give more to Merit Academy.

So, what should the parents be concerned about? The reality is, we don’t know the inner workings of these schools, we’re really in the dark here. We can shed some light on this situation, by looking at the words of someone who is (was…) one of the experts on the impact of this change – Tina Cassens, outgoing Chief Academic Officer. A recent CORA request revealed an email she sent to Witt detailing her concerns about restructuring the grade levels in each school. Read these, and keep them in mind when Witt gives his presentation Wednesday, see if they’re being addressed and how.

At the Elementary level:

  • Classes at the elementary are sitting at 30 – 45 students per grade level. Financially, staffing models would call for 1.5 teachers per grade level, which is not logistically possible. We have been watching this for years and discussing building primary (PK-2) and intermediate schools (3-5). The alternative will be multi-age classrooms across the board, i.e. a 1st/2nd grade combo, 3rd/4th grade combo, 5th/6th grade combo. Another alternative is hiring above staff formulas, which would greatly impact the district.
  • SPED center-based programs are currently sitting at capacity. Sending 6th graders back into the programs will send them over staffing allocations, requiring the hiring of additional part-time special education teachers, which are hard to find.

At the Middle School level:

  • Running a middle school with less than 300 students will essentially strip the enrichment opportunities. Under the current staffing model they would have less than 3 full time enrichment teachers. Finding part-time enrichment teachers is tough.
  • Most of the 6th grade teachers are not certified for elementary, thus the middle school would need to enact our reduction in force policy, which affects both middle and high school.
  • SPED center-based programs will run under capacity with 6th graders moved down.
  • Shifting Merit down in the building will result in displacing specially designed classrooms that serve our SPED center-based programs. This adds costs again to the District. One of these areas includes a specially designed bathroom/changing room and kitchen. I am not sure how these would be redesigned.
  • Shifting Merit down would also remove the family and consumer studies room, which then eliminates this program for the Middle School.
  • Redesigning the building for a 2nd year would result in additional expenses for the District. This includes redesigning the bells and announcement system which took over 9 months to reconfigure and adding/relocating separation doors which were extremely expensive.

Listen in Wednesday, her experience with this district is extensive and we should take these concerns seriously.

Interim Superintendent expenses

I guess one of the perks of being an interim superintendent is eating out frequently at taxpayer expense?

January started out slow. Witt didn’t have a district credit card, so submitted an expense report for the Pantry ($28.03) and Peak BBQ ($50.99).

For February, Witt enjoyed a couple meals at Mountainara ($51.07 and $71.68), Fortune Dragon ($34.31), and a whopping $121.44 at Ted’s Montana Grill (source). He went on to spend $29.39 at the Pantry, $44.64 at Rosie’s Diner (in Monument), $37.19 at Grandmother’s Kitchen, $64.05 at Wines of Colorado, $42.75 at Fusion Japan, $65.32 and $72.90 at Mountainara (gotta admit, I love that place too), and then $50.14 at the Pantry (curious, how many people joined him for that meal to push the bill so high, and how many of them were board members?). (source)

So, from 1/1-3/14/2023 (his credit card billing cycle ends at the middle of the month), Ken Witt has incurred $763.90 in expenses dining out.

Truth and Liberty Coalition – School Board Candidate Academy

Interested in running for school board? A friend in a neighboring community tipped me off to this…Andrew Wommack’s Truth and Liberty Coalition is hosting a Candidate Academy at Charis from 9:00-4:30 on Saturday, April 15th. It’s not open to just anyone though…you do need to fill out an application, which asks for things such as what church you attend, your pastor’s name and phone number, and an additional character reference. The training is being presented by the “National School Board Coalition”…an important-sounding group but one that, when you dig, isn’t really a coalition, it’s one guy, Ted Mische, a graduate of the Leadership Program of the Rockies (LPR) (Mische previously led the ‘Colorado School Board Coalition’).

Some excerpts from the invitation, which you can read in its entirety below, are:

At Truth and Liberty, we want every school district in this state to teach only edifying and morally upright curriculum with an accurate and patriotic view of American history.

…

We are facing a crisis in our times as our nation seems to be abandoning biblical teaching, morality, and even common sense at a pace and depth that is alarming. Can you imagine the positive long-term impact that biblically minded Christians could have as members of 178 school boards in this state?

Our Interim Superintendent Ken Witt (also an LPR grad) hired Mische to do some consulting work for ERBOCES in early January (Witt works two jobs, if you recall, his interim superintendent position in Woodland Park and his executive director position at ERBOCES). This candidate academy appears unrelated to that work but there appear to be close ties between Wommack and the LPR grads (such as Bob Schafer, Curt Grina, Tim Farmer, Bryce Carlson, Ken Witt, Mick Bates, Dan Williams, Trevor Miller, Brad Miller, Ted Mische).

Merit Academy not paying for transportation services

UPDATE – it’s been pointed out to me that there may yet be an agreement written to split costs (a Merit board member says there will be one at some point).

——————-

The district made a big deal about expansion of transportation services to Merit Academy students, and emphasized that it would not add any cost to the district. What they failed to mention is that Merit Academy isn’t paying anything themselves for this service (apart from, presumably, the $50 per kid per year fee parents pay for this service) – the money is coming out of funds used to educate the children of the transitional public schools alone. This was evident in a CORA request I just received results for. The actual text of the CORA request was:

Please provide the district’s contract with Durham bus services for the following school years: 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024. Please also provide the contract, amendment, or other agreement(s) with Merit Academy covering their use of transportation services through Durham Bus Services.

source

I did receive the contract with Durham, and one amendment to that contract. But that’s it, no written agreement between the district and Merit. When I inquired as to whether that was omitted in error, this was the reply:

All documents responsive to this request were provided.

The relevant section from the Merit Academy charter contract is section 5.2, as follows:

5.2. Transportation. The District and the School acknowledge and agree that transportation will not be provided by the District to students attending the School unless otherwise mutually agreed in writing. Any transportation of students to the School shall be the sole responsibility of the School, with all costs borne by the School. The School and the District agree to meet on an annual basis to discuss how the Parties might collaborate to provide transportation options for students of the School.

source

So, Merit kids get a free ride…the public school kids pay for the busses, leaving Merit kids with more money per pupil to be used for educational purposes. Let’s hope the board decides to instead enact an agreement that fairly splits costs…a board director has told me that no written agreement is needed for this transportation issue, but I’m hoping that’s not the final word.

I’ve asked for recent invoices from Durham so we can put some exact numbers on this…but with the Durham costs being fixed, the fewer the kids paying for it, the more each kid pays. For example, if you and three friends eat out and need to split a $100 bill, that’s $25 per person. But if one of those people doesn’t contribute, each of the remaining people have to pay $33.33. That’s the situation here…the bus bill is not being split equally amongst all the students covered by it. Parents do pay $50 per child to participate in this service, but that only covers a small fraction of the actual costs.

WPSD Academic Achievement Update (March 2023)

In the March DAC meeting, a presentation was given showing the WPSD academic achievement. It took the district eight days to finally send it to me (the legal limit under CORA is three days for a single document); you can view it below.

Some of the highlights:

  • High School PSAT/SAT Achievement Gains
  • Achievement for 8th Grade Math & Reading (16% and 19% over state proficiency)
  • Growth for 5th Grade Math at Gateway Elementary (73% tile)
  • Graduation Rate for Student with Disabilities (95%)

Well done, WPSD!

Check out the full report here.

Detailed information on the effect of refusing grant money this year

The school board and interim superintendent Ken Witt chose not to apply for most grants for the upcoming school year. We’ve struggled a bit to really and truly quantify what this means for the district…how to translate grants into job positions and benefits for the students. Thanks to the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA), we’ve learned quite a bit. There are some outstanding CORA requests for more information, but for now, here’s what we’ve learned.

  • the grants received by the district for the ‘21-22 school year;
  • here’s the ‘22-23 school year info. Note the ‘ESSER’ grants are what’s often referred to as Covid money…temporary federal grants that are going away this fall.
  • Here’s a conversation via email about what grant topics are to be pursued for next year.

The real treasure trove of useful facts though, comes from an email exchange between Ken Witt and Laura Magnuson, the district mental health supervisor and a co-author of the mental health presentation given to the board on 12/21. Laura outlines how grants are being used, and later in the email summarizes a discussion she had with Witt on this topic of grants. Read this email for yourself, there is a LOT of information in there, only some of which I’ll be summarizing below.

  • The Substance Abuse Block Grant funded two social work positions and had additional funding for prevention. This grant was up for renewal; it would have been easy to renew this and maintain that funding.
  • The grant money she expected to be lost was about $1.2 million annually, funding fifteen jobs.
  • The School Health Professional Grant currently funds five school social workers (‘with significant additional program funding’).
  • Witt’s approach to mitigation acts of violence is to rely upon campus security, rather than fixing this problem at its source (mental health).
  • When asked how the schools would continue their work to prevent youth suicide, Witt replied that WPSD will prioritize academic success.

Sadly, Laura closed her email by stating her intent to not return to WPSD next year. Her email makes clear her dedication and caring for the students, and the community should be greatly concerned at not only her loss, but the reshaping of our district which has pushed her and others like her out.

Please read her email in its entirety for yourself. It’s our best insight to date on the use of grant money for social programs in the school district, and what we’ll be losing out on next year due to this board and interim superintendent.

Turning Point USA

As this email shows, board director Sue Patterson is trying to start a student club at our high school (yeah, the sort of thing that’s supposed to be started by actual students), a branch of the national organization Turning Point USA. It’s a pretty extreme-right political movement working to indoctrinate kids in the new version of ‘conservative’ political ideals. Oddly, they refer to themselves as a ‘grassroots‘ effort, though NBC reported they brought in around $55 million in revenue in fiscal year 2020.

4/2/2023 Weekly Update

Last week:

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

  • Ken Witt and David Illingworth will be presenting at the City Council meeting Thursday, April 6th (agenda) at 7:00 (in the city council chambers, near Memorial Park). Presumably, this is with regards to how sales tax money is being spent – before Covid, these presentations were more regular.
  • Public comment is open at this Thursday’s meeting. It’s a city council meeting, not school board meeting, so comment should be kept relevant to the matters the council has some control over, such as the sales tax money directed to the school.
  • The next regularly scheduled board meeting is April 12th.