Tag Archives: David Illingworth

WPSD board member David Illingworth

Derrick Wilburn files lawsuit against Academy D-20 parent | Courts | gazette.com

Academy District 20 school board member Derrick Wilburn has filed a lawsuit alleging that district parent, Bernadette Guthrie, has waged a public, multi-pronged smear campaign against him for almost a year.
— Read on gazette.com/news/courts/colorado-springs-school-board-member-files-lawsuit-against-district-parent/article_36b89a80-be28-11ef-825e-2b48ed47cef0.html

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Note, a GoFundMe has been set up to help with the legal defense costs for this parent. The prosecuting attorney bringing this case against this parent is David Illingworth, the Woodland Park school board member soundly defeated by Keegan Barkley in the last election. The D20 board president is Aaron Salt, who you’ll recognize as Ken Witt’s right-hand man in WPSD.

Campaign Donation Summary (10/4)

Colorado does a great job of managing elections, with so much data made available to the public. Financial data is tracked via TRACER, a great website with comprehensive data on donations and expenses for campaigns. The most recent filing was due yesterday, so with this new data, here are some observations.

The fundraising leaders are clearly the three challengers; here are the fundraising totals from highest to lowest.

  • Seth Bryant: $24,975.65 raised
  • Keegan Barkley: $22,682.38 raised
  • Mike Knott: $22,613.29 raised
  • David Illingworth: $14,971.03 raised
  • Mick Bates: $10,978.24 raised
  • Cassie Kimbrell: $9,622.36 raised

Each side is running as a slate of three candidates, so another useful comparison is the total per slate. In that case, the three incumbents (Bates, Kimbrell, Illingworth) have raised $35,571.63, while the three challengers (Bryant, Knott, Barkley) have raised almost double that, $70,271.32!

The other interesting data point is the average contribution. Despite Bryant, Barkley, and Knott raising nearly twice what the incumbents (Bates, Kimbrell, Illingworth) they’re trying to defeat this election have, their average contribution was around half of the incumbents’. Here are the average contributions, again ranked from highest to lowest:

  • Mick Bates: ~$168 average contribution, from 58 individual supporters
  • David Illingworth: ~$161 average contribution, from 87 individual supporters
  • Cassie Kimbrell: ~$129 average contribution, from 66 individual supporters
  • Seth Bryant: ~$80 average contribution, from 215 individual supporters
  • Keegan Barkley: ~$77 average contribution, from 225 individual supporters
  • Mike Knott: ~$75 average contribution, from 220 individual supporters

(note – these averages are approximate and do not account for donations from the candidate themselves to their election committee)

So in summary, the three challengers (Seth Bryant, Keegan Barkley, and Mike Knott) are raising nearly double the amount of money the incumbents are, and doing so through a large number of smaller donors. The incumbents are relying on a small number of larger donors to fund their campaigns.

There are two Independent Expenditure Committees registered to support the incumbents. The only one reporting donations currently is Teller County for School Choice. They’ve raised $3,700 so far, and while they are not yet reporting any expenses, they do owe the state of Colorado $550 in late fees for not filing their reports on time (that’s 15% of their total raised so far). David Illingworth himself has racked up a large quantity of fines for late filing; we’ll dig into and summarize that at a future date (but it’s all visible on the TRACER website if you want to explore it yourself).

Numerous times, the board has declared the opposition to their actions to be the part of “a small group of radicals”. They’ve downplayed the magnitude of opposition and repeatedly talked about having widespread support. These fundraising stats do not appear to support those claims.

Ballots are mailed out around the middle of this month, and due November 7th. You can track the status of your ballot, from mailing to being accepted, at this website. VOTE!

Campaign collaboration heats up

This school board election campaign is heating up on social media, with collaboration becoming more and more apparent. Take this example from a recent Facebook thread on the Teller County Community Page. Local SAC member Heather Scholz dove into the debate about mask mandates in schools, and posted this screenshot…which happened to catch Katie Illingworth (David Illingworth’s wife) texting her with advice on making this an entirely new message thread instead of just a reply on September 9th:

This has been a recent topic of debate…Dave Illingworth posted this on his campaign page on Facebook:

Given this, it wasn’t surprising to see Dave’s wife Katie step in to help guide this conversation elsewhere on social media.

What appears normal on the surface though, has one serious problem.

In July, Heather Scholz formed an Independent Expenditure (IE) committee called “Teller County for School Choice”, with the stated purpose of:

TO UPHOLD EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM IN TELLER COUNTY’S WOODLAND PARK RE-2 SCHOOL DISTRICT, OUR COMMITTEE ENDORSES SCHOOL BOARD CANDIDATES WHO PRIORITIZE SCHOOL CHOICE.

After September 1st, it is illegal for any candidate or candidate commitee for public office to collaborate with an IE. In this Facebook thread, Katie Illingworth attempted to collaborate with Heather Scholz on messaging regarding mask mandates in the district, an issue her husband was promoting in his own Facebook page. Yes, in this case it’s Dave’s wife collaborating and not Dave himself, but the question then becomes, is his wife working on his campaign in any way? As someone who has shown a keen interest in our school district, being one of Merit Academy’s co-founders and later a Merit Academy board member, it is unreasonable to expect she would not be a participant in her own husband’s re-election effort. There’s a chance this level of collaboration *might* be OK…but if it can be influencing any expenditures of that IE (advertising messages, etc), it would definitely not be OK.

As a side note, Heather’s IE is currently delinquent, having not filed their 9/5/2023 report of donations and expenditures. She’s being assessed a penalty of $50 per day for this.

She may perhaps find some success in requesting a waiver of fees…David Illingworth himself has faced fees multiple times for filing his paperwork late (though his requests for waivers were typically denied). Go dig around the Tracer website if you want to learn more (search for either ‘candidate’ and then Illingworth, or choose ‘committee’ and then ‘Teller County for School Choice’.

Follow the Money – canvassing

In their latest campaign expense filings, both David Illingworth and Mick Bates list a $250 expense to Crimson Central Services in Colorado Springs, for “Canvassing Services” (you can find all this info on TRACER). Let’s dig deeper. Here’s a list of all election campaigns that had similar expenses with that company for last month:

Six expenses of the same amount for various school board campaigns in different cities…it seems likely these are for the same purpose. We at first thought this was for door knocking, as that’s the traditional definition. However, those two Canon City BOE candidates list a different purpose for their $250 expenses…one lists ‘software expense’, the other lists ‘voter data’. If you look at the past history of this particular company, they have a very large number of expenses of $1,250 for consulting and data. It seems most likely that Bates and Illingworth are paying Crimson Central Services for voter data, which is a normal thing for a candidate to seek out anyway.

Who is Crimson Central Services?

Crimson Central Services is an LLC filed in Wyoming – a state which allows LLC owners to mask the identity of their owners. But the records on Tracer list business addresses, and 6140 South Gun Club Road, Unit K6-354 in Aurora, a UPS store where I presume the 354 is a mailbox number. So, bit of a dead end there. These days though, their address is listed as 100 East Saint Vrain Stree, unit #105, in Colorado Springs. Who else is at that address? Victor’s Canvassing.

Now, Victor’s Canvassing is not a company I’d expect you to have heard of. However, they identified themselves when handing out this flyer to teachers’ homes:

The return address on that flyer (some were mailed, some delivered in person by Victor’s Canvassing) lists the Freedom Foundation in Washington…a right-wing group known for attacking unions and public education (link1, link2, link3, link4, link5…you get the idea). So, no surprise to see them involved here, and not surprising to see Bates and Illingworth using a similar canvassing company as the Freedom Foundation.

But we’re not quite done digging! Who is behind Victor’s Canvassing? The Chief Operating Officer is Daniel Fenlason:

Who is Daniel? The Truth and Liberty Coalition (the 501c(4) group established by Andrew Wommack) proudly lists him as one of their ‘Influencers‘:

So, in summary – Bates and Illingworth appear to be using the services of a canvassing company that’s closely linked to the Truth and Liberty Coalition and Andrew Wommack, as well as the Freedom Foundation.

Woodland park woman acquitted of all charges tied to calling police on school board member’s wife

During the school board recall effort last August, one of the recall organizers, Samantha Peck, was gathering petition signatures in the Safeway parking lot when she called 911 over concerns about a possible drunk person about to leave the store. That person was board member David Illingworth’s wife, and when police arrived, they did not detect any signs of alcohol or other concerns with that woman. After investigating further, Peck was arrested and charged with two counts of attempting to influence a public servant and filing a false police report with the Woodland Park Police Department.

Peck finally had her day in court last week, where a jury quickly found her not guilty on all three counts. The story linked to above contains video of board member David Illingworth being interviewed by police and contains further analysis of that, it’s worth reading and watching the video for yourself.

Peck later posted this to the Concerned Parents of Teller County Facebook group:

We live in a country with problems, just like the rest of the world. Our systems need work. However, our process still has the ability to provide justice if you are strong and patient enough. 12 everyday citizens heard all facts of this case and decided in mere minutes not only am I innocent on all charges, but they took the time to talk with both parties to tell them this was the grossest abuse of power they have ever seen. That says it all. I could write pages sharing with you each and every detail of this case. But, I would rather focus my efforts on using this to help our community move forward. This case has proven that David Illingworth is willing to use his position for personal and political gain, even if it is unethical. I hope that isn’t what this community wants as a quality in our representatives. Please, vote this November. Spend time learning about the candidates. Make a difference for students whether you are a parent of a school age child or not. Leave politics out and vote based off of character. I’m proud because our country has prioritized the ideology that ALL children have a right to access education. Let’s protect a foundation of true values. Please vote.

In honor of my tribe I will include a few highlights that will live with me forever:

-Mr. Lane proving Officer Humphrey lied and forcing him to admit it

-The prosecution’s own witness testifying Humphrey lied about what she said

-The strength of Rachel and Jill to tolerate the prosecution trying to attack them. Yet these brave women never faltered and got to share the truth

-After the prosecution tried to attack me for my facebook post returning to Mr. Lane (arguably the great human I have ever met) and having him say to me your post was good, you ARE like those people you wrote about

-Mr. Lane casually reminding the jury Katie Illingworth wasn’t honest

-The jury’s faces when Humphrey had to admit he taped the conversation when David Illingworth tells him how to falsly charging me, but didn’t record my conversation with him showing just how innocent I am

-The jury almost falling out of their seats when Mr. Lane asked Humphrey what did the witnesses say when you interviewed them, and Humphrey had to say he never did and never has interviewed the witnesses

-The prosecution cross examining a war hero and offering to call him COL and his response: just call me Lee❤️

And now that I type those moments I realize just how bad corruption is in Woodland Park…help end it. Get involved, write letters, ask questions, but above all, VOTE.

It’s nice to finally have this all behind us. The past year has seen several references to this incident, with people jumping to conclusions rather than waiting for the facts to come out in court. For example, Andrew Wommack, in May, described this incident as ‘swatting’ (he got the facts wrong but this is the incident he was talking about at time stamp 2:00 of this video). In June’s board meeting, one of the public comment speakers likewise talked about this ‘swatting’ incident. The verdict is clear and Peck’s innocence has been established; I hope those individuals apologize to her.

A WPSD job applicant explains their decision to cancel their interview

We recently received this email, sent to the district from a job applicant who decided to cancel their interview at the last minute. The email explains their reasoning, and highlights a concern that parents in this district have – with 40-50% of staff not returning next year, how will the district attract qualified candidates to fill those vacancies?

The applicant’s name has been redacted for privacy; authenticity of this has been verified with school insiders.

The reply from director David Illingworth is below:

How conservatives transformed the Woodland Park, CO, school district

The leaders of the Woodland Park School District are enacting an experiment in conservative governance in the middle of a state controlled by Democrats, with little in the way so far to slow them down. The school board’s decisions have won some praise in heavily Republican Teller County, but opposition is growing, including from conservative Christians and lifelong GOP voters who say the board has made too many ill-advised decisions and lacks transparency. 
— Read on www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/woodland-park-colorado-school-board-conservatives-rcna83311

This article was written by NBC reporter Tyler Kingkade. Tyler spent a few days in Woodland Park last month talking to people and learning about the situation here. I think he did a really good job of telling this story in his own words in this article, instead of just repeating what people tell him…the work he put in to listening and learning really shows.

Illingworth’s latest belittling email to a parent

David Illingworth has a long history of hostile language towards parents and teachers in the district. His latest tirade was directed towards Nate Owen, as much a part of the WP community as anybody. Nate is a popular high school teacher who clearly cares greatly for his students, has taught in the district for eleven years, and has four kids growing up in WP schools (he’s also sponsored Key Club, part of the Kiwanis family service organization, for all those eleven years).

Here’s what David Illingworth emailed Nate:

Nate, you are union president and nothing you say has any credibility with me. You seem to only care about creating division, despair, and a climate of doom amongst teachers and parents for your wealthy union bosses. Don’t even pretend to guilt parents and teachers that focusing schools on academics means abandoning our kids. That’s disgusting.


Parents run this district now, not the union. The schools exist for the kids, not the union and their politicians. Your grandstanding for the cameras does not fool me. You work for the union, not parents and certainly not kids.


DAVID W. ILLINGWORTH II
Director

source

The board had adjourned to executive session in their board meeting earlier in the day; the meeting livestream continued to run. Nate took the opportunity to speak to those still present in the room; you can watch his speech below. Nate forwarded the text of his speech to the board; Illingworth’s email was in reply to that.

Director Illingworth is up for re-election this fall.