Merit Contract draft finally posted!

The draft contract between WPSD and Merit Academy has finally been posted to the district’s website. You can download the full contract here, or the executive summary here. We’ll have our full analysis posted soon. The board will be taking public input in a meeting on Wednesday May 18th in the High School auditorium. They’ll also be taking questions via an online form that isn’t working at the moment, but when it does, the link is here.

Board meeting schedule

The board has rescheduled their next meeting, originally scheduled for May 11th and rescheduled to May 18th. This is planned to be a town hall format to discuss the Merit Academy contract (which has not been released yet). They’re tentatively planning to approve a lease for Merit to use the Middle School on May 25th per the timeline.

They plan to tour Gateway Elementary this Friday at noon (agenda).

Feasibility Study Presentation

The Feasibility Study Presentation to be shown at tonight’s board work session can be downloaded here.

Points of note:

  • Most public school rooms would be at 100% capacity. One classroom would have 1 empty seat. One ‘yoga’ room is at 0%.
  • Merit space would be at 66% capacity. So, the board would be giving Merit room to grow, but no room for the Middle School to grow.
  • Construction and other costs to make this happen would be in the $112-229k range. Additional capital expenditures are identified for the next two years; I think we’ll need to see the Merit contract to determine if they’re required to pay for any of this.
  • Some uncertainties are noted, such as whether moving and storage costs would be shared.

School Board meetings today

Today is a busy day for the school board. After last week’s fiasco regarding the Feasibility Study (let’s discuss it! Oh wait, we don’t want the public know about it, let’s remove it from the agenda!), they’ll be finally be giving the public a peek at it in tonight’s work session, scheduled to start at 6:00PM in the district offices (agenda link, livestream link). After the discussion about the feasibility study, they’ll go into a closed door executive session to chat with their lawyers about how to push this Merit contract though and set statewide precedent that will upend the traditional charter school approval process (or at the very least, lead to more expensive legal bills for our district).

First though, the board is scheduled to tour Columbine Elementary at noon (agenda). Why would they do this now, when they’re in the midst of contract dealings with Merit? And coincidentally, just reviewed (in private) the feasibility study on Merit being given space in the middle school? I suspect they’re reconsidering the middle school plan and considering giving Merit to Columbine, but we should learn more tonight.

Note too that we’re not guaranteed to see the original feasibility study…tonight is just a presentation about it. We may or may not get to view the document given to both the board and Merit last week.

Preliminary Injunction GRANTED!

A preliminary injunction has been granted against the school board regarding the OML (Open Meetings Law)!

“The Defendant shall comply with the OML by clearly, honestly, and forthrightly listing all future Agenda items regarding Merit Academy.”…”The Board is further enjoined from “rubber stamping” any Board decision that does not comply with the notice requirements of the OML.”

-It does NOT negate the MOU with Merit Academy.

-It does NOT prevent the Board from looking at and considering the Merit Contract.

-It does NOT prevent the Board from pursuing the Feasibility study and facility usage.

-It DOES state that they must diligently comply with all Open Meeting Laws. 

-It DOES enforce the rule that they must explicitly state what they will be discussing in a meeting on the Agenda. 

-It DOES support that our case has some legal justification and the judge saw fit to issue this until the time of a trial (based on my complaint/ lawsuit).

Let’s keep fighting for transparency in our school district! This is only the first step in this fight, a final hearing and ruling is yet to come. Please consider supporting this effort via the GoFundMe link above!

You can read the entire ruling here.

Feasibility Study blocked from public view

In the April 27 school board work session, the board agenda had the following item: “Feasibility Study Presentation by Executive Director of Technology & Operations Miles Tuttle” (source). This information was to be presented to the public in that work session. Instead, the school board decided to keep it secret and hidden from public view. Considering the financial ramifications of a potential contract with Merit Academy, this is unacceptable to the taxpayers of this community. CORA requests for this information are pending. This post will be updated with a video recording of the meeting shortly.

Dr. Neal responds to comments from Wommack

Superintendent Neal is having to play damage control with comments made by local cult leader Andrew Wommack, who does have quite the following in this town with his bible study school (sorry dude, it’s not a real college). The Pike Peak Courier covers it well in this article.

I call on our school board to issue a resolution condemning the remarks made by Wommack. Rusterholtz is already quoted in that article opposing those statements…but those words are weak, we need a formal resolution from the board to send the proper message to our students and community.