Tag Archives: Fiscal Responsibility

What if it Were Your Student? | Guest column

From the 7/17/2024 Courier:

If the election’s over, why keep talking about the school board?

There’s been a high price paid—starting with the then-traitorous signatures on the Declaration of Independence, and later in blood — for us not only to vote, but manage the gift of elected leaders, our collective taxes.

Responding to a director’s question at the June BOE about bussing students to and from school, the superintendent reported transportation was completely state-reimbursed. This error prompted Colorado Open Records Agreement (CORA) requests from one citizen, who provided documentation to the superintendent. The superintendent admitted the error, restating his commitment to provide transportation to all district students. I wholeheartedly support this.

But there’s a catch.

Student transportation in 22-23 cost WPSD $1,230,940 (per CDE). The state reimbursed $238,137, collected transportation fees were $13,035 —leaving $979,768 to be covered by state-provided per-pupil funding. At the time, 1,677 attended our five traditional schools; the remaining 300 attended Merit Academy. (Merit was in the district, but transportation wasn’t offered.)

That nearly $1 million balance has been paid only from our district’s traditional-school per-pupil allotment. That’s $584/student, all students not just bussed students, from an amount also intended for building, administration, teacher salaries, the works.

But let’s watch our math. For the 23-24 year the district began including transportation for Merit–only asking fund participation of the $100/family asked of all bus-utilizing families. Their reasoning: Merit Academy’s transportation did not require an additional stop. But it will in 2024-2025.

To be clear, the traditional 1,422 students paid for the bussing of 1,820 students.

For 24-25, MA again will not be asked to pay their share of busing costs.

This year, traditional enrollment is projected to lower; MA is projected to be higher as they add preschool and 11th grade. Yet the nearly $1 million transportation costs will only be divided among educational funds for the traditional schools.

If MA paid their share of district bussing, the traditional schools gain at least $214,124.

Which would go a long way to paying teachers—and students—more of what they deserve. (What if that traditional student was your own?)

CORA-requested information shows leadership from MA pursuing their fair share of grant funding—suggesting even though budgets were set, they could be revised.

Should MA, in kind, pursue their share of transportation costs? Some argue, truthfully, that district schools receive funding that MA does not. Yet MA is eligible as well for grants and waivers unique to charter schools.

It’s but one example among many of preferential treatment of one school by a BOE that is charged with looking fairly to the interest of all students, all schools.

What is the honorable response from all parties? Should district costs be shared among all its beneficiaries? Should those continuing to present similar issues, finding themselves ignored, remain silent? Should traditional students’ blindly trust this Board?

But more importantly, how could we as a community come together with facts—indivisible, toward justice for all?

Carol Greenstreet

ERBOCES restores Ken Witt’s full-time salary, gives him bonus and a raise

Some months after Ken Witt took a ‘full time’ job here in WPSD, his other employer, ERBOCES, cut his salary to reflect the part-time effort he was going to be putting into that. Well, they reversed that in their May 2024 board meeting. Ken Witt’s ERBOCES salary is back to the full base amount, PLUS he gets a 5% cost of living increase, PLUS he gets a 10% bonus. Scroll to the end of the meeting minutes here to read the details for yourself. So now Ken Witt is back to milking the taxpayers for two full-time salaries (ERBOCES executive director, and WPSD superintendent), plus generous benefits and bonuses.

City Council debates sales tax

In the 5/16 council meeting, city council talked about sales tax, and Ken Witt and Mick Bates gave a short presentation and answered some questions (you can watch it here). The debate seems to be over whether or not City Council should trust the Woodland Park School District to spend the sales tax money in the manner agreed upon. Witt provided pie charts but little actual detail, something council members Geer and Baldwin both pointed out.

Here are some actions by the district and superintendent to consider when asking whether they can be trusted to spend sales tax money as agreed upon:

  • The district provides transportation services to Merit Academy without making them pay a proportionate share of the overall cost – and when public comment has brought this to light last year, Witt provided misleading answers.
  • The district spent about $100,000 to charter Merit Academy…money they could have asked that school to reimburse but instead had the other schools pay via their funds.
  • The district provides food service to Merit Academy at no cost to that school.
  • The board paid a $275,000 separation agreement to our previous superintendent, Dr. Mathew Neal (this was recorded in the FY’23 general ledger as “July 2022 Supplemental Payroll” with no comments added about who it was for).
  • The district redirected $270,155 of federal grant money without public notice nor board approval – the board had voted to spend this money on the five ‘traditional’ public schools, but it was instead sent to Merit Academy in secret.
  • The board voted to renew Ken Witt’s contract, giving him a raise and potential bonus in the process, without ever performing any job review.
  • In the 5/16/2024 city council meeting, Ken Witt appears to have lied to council, saying sales tax money was being used for ‘innovation’ by paying for the Capturing Kids Hearts program, when the facts show that program is funded by different sources.
  • District CFO Amy Ryan has barely lasted a year…a job posting shows she’s leaving the district already.

Ken Witt and the Woodland Park School District have not earned our trust with our sales tax money.

Capturing Kids Hearts – what does it cost?

UPDATE 5/30 – I’ve received updated general ledger information which shows three additional charges in this current fiscal year FY’24, bringing the total to $53,700 paid out of ESSER grant money, and $97,050 paid out of general fund 10 reserves (carryover from last year as per the specific budget resolution). No change to the conclusions in what I wrote below – Ken Witt lied to council about sales tax money being used for this.

For the current school year, the district implemented the Capturing Kids Hearts program, a social-emotional learning tool. People following this matter closely might be curious where the money is coming from, as in Ken Witt’s presentation to City Council on 5/16, he highlighted this as how sales tax money is spent on ‘innovation’ in the current fiscal year (’23-24 school year):

Another slide from his presentation showed the district was spending $80,000 on this innovation aspect in FY24 (when asked about the ‘other’, he said there currently are no examples of that nor have there ever been):

Just to be perfectly clear, his presentation to council was solely on how sales tax money is being spent by the district. So $80k on this Capturing Kids Hearts program could probably be considered an OK expense for that ‘innovative programing’ category of sales tax money expenses.

Except it wasn’t.

Sales tax money goes directly into the General Fund, which is fund 10. So when reviewing expenses, based on Ken Witt’s statement one would expect all Capturing Kids Hearts expenses to be charged to that fund. When reviewing the general ledger though (my data is only current as of 4/11, it’s possible new charges have been added), we see that $5,610 was spent on food service (for training events, presumably):

Then, $8,000 was spent from the general fund on software. That’s it for charges which could be tied to sales tax money. But that’s not the extent of charges related to this program. The bulk of the cost of Capturing Kids Hearts this year, $53,700 was paid for with ESSER grant money (aka, Federal Covid Relief funds). NOT sales tax money. Note fund ’22’ below (designated purpose grants), and grant number 4414 (the specific grant):

In other words, Ken Witt was not being truthful when he told City Council the district was spending $80k of sales tax money this year on innovation programs, of which only Captured Kids Hearts was named.

So for the current FY’24, where Witt says we’re spending $80,000 in sales tax money on Capturing Kids Hearts, at most we’ve only spent $13,610 – the rest came from a federal grant. But even that $13,610 is called into question when you look at the specific budget resolution passed for FY’24. This resolution authorizes expenditure of fund balances for specific purposes – or to word it differently, spending our reserve fund. The specific budget resolution for the current fiscal year, FY’24, authorizes spending $100,000 from our reserve fund – NOT sales tax – on Capturing Kids Hearts:

I mentioned my general ledger data is only current as of 4/11/2024 – new charges may have been added since. If that’s the case, and more than $13,610 has been spent, just keep in mind that the board authorized $100,000 of reserve funds to be spent on this program, so the district would have to exceed $100,000 in charges, to fund 10, in the current fiscal year for Ken Witt to be make the argument that the district is using any sales tax money on that program for this year.

If you’d like to view the invoices for details on the money paid to Capturing Kids Hearts, you can view them here (provided via CORA).

Looking at the previous fiscal year, FY’23 (school year ’22-23), we see when the district first paid Capturing Kids Hearts for the program, a $108,500 charge in June. This was charged to fund 10, the general fund, so it could be argued that the district used sales tax money in the previous fiscal year to pay for Capturing Kids Hearts.

So, the facts do not support Ken Witt’s claim that the district is spending sales tax money on Capturing Kids Hearts in the current fiscal year.

Financial fraud in WPSD

In August of 2023, the WPSD cut a check to Merit Academy for $270,155 in money from the ESSER III grant the district received from the federal government (this was COVID relief funds). I believe this meets the definition of fraud, as I’ll outline below.

The WPSD budget for the 2022-2023 school year (fiscal year 23, or FY23) – allocated all ESSER money to be spent on the five ‘traditional’ public schools. None was allocated to go to Merit Academy.

Merit FY23 budget didn’t include any ESSER grant money (in fact, there’s only $15,273 in federal money listed)

Money moving from the WPSD to Merit Academy is documented in a monthly ‘flowthrough’ spreadsheet – these monthly spreadsheets never showed any ESSER grant money.

On 1/31/23, Merit headmaster Gwynn Pekron reached out to Del Garrick requesting ESSER grant money; she was told that all money had been allocated for FY23, and that Merit could request money in FY24 if they wished (click here to read the email exchange).

In early June, Merit Academy again reached out to the WPSD about ESSER grant money, requesting money from FY24 (as previously suggested by Del). However, the FY24 budget passed by the board on June 14th showed $858,241 in ESSER grant money, none of which was allocated to go to Merit Academy.

On June 30th, 2023, Merit Academy submitted an invoice to the WPSD requesting $270,155 in ESSER grant money. That invoice was processed and paid in August 2023 (presumably, the delay was due to the district being closed for summer break).

As Merit had not budgeted to receive any ESSER money, they created multiple ledger entries on 6/30/2023 to retroactively justify the expense of the ESSER grant money (click here).

One consequence of this process was that the WPSD started the year with an inflated grant balance, that caught up to the district in January. In January of 2024, middle school parents received an email that an after school academic assistance program was being cut immediately; we were told it was due to a lack of funds to continue the program (funds were quickly reallocated to continue this program). Data obtained from a CORA request showed the ESSER grant fund was already grossly overdrawn, and the budget for that had been slashed from the original $858,241, to now only $523,524 (that difference, $334,717, is greater than the $270,155 that went to Merit in August and is as yet unexplained).

When I asked the board of education about this, director Kimbrell told me, “We were required to include Merit in the allocation of ESSER funds but the prior staff did not include them in the FY22-23 budget even though it was against the law not to.” The CDE’s website does not support the claim that it’s against the law not to include Merit (scroll to the bottom of that link).

So in summary, the board never approved any ESSER grant money to go to Merit Academy, in either year. This substantial sum of money was allocated to be spent on the other schools. Instead of going through the proper channels of including this in a budget (which then allows the public to be aware of how this money is being spent), the district operated outside of board overview and negotiated this directly with Merit Academy. The board approved a budget for FY24 which had inaccurate fund balances as a result. The WPSD deceived the public about where this money was being spent, by not only never including it in any budget, but purposefully publishing a FY24 budget that showed money to be spent in the district that didn’t actually exist (I believe this can best be described as fraud).

There’s another side to this that warrants further investigation. Merit Academy started life as a contract school under ERBOCES, NOT the Woodland Park School District. ERBOCES awarded some ESSER grant money to Merit Academy for the previous fiscal year, FY22 (this is the $10,845.60 number you see in the general ledger screenshot linked above). The question I have is, how did the state and federal governments determine the amount of ESSER grant money to award to the WPSD? If they based this calculation on the number of pupils in the district, it’s clear that Merit Academy was not part of the district at the time of ESSER grant money calculation…did ERBOCES receive extra ESSER grant money that should have been transferred to WPSD when Merit Academy was absorbed into the district in the 2022-2023 school year?

WP cuts middle school after school academic assistance program

The Woodland Park school board found the money to give superintendent Ken Witt a $15k raise (plus 5% annual raise and up to 15% bonus), and found $328,000 extra to give to their pet project, Merit Academy, but followed up by CUTTING an after school academic assistance program at the middle school. As is typical for the Woodland Park school district, details are scarce…we’ll post an update as we learn more.

UPDATE – another email was sent out as a followup with new information. CORA request has been submitted to see if there’s any paper trail that would shed some light on this. The new email said:

Hello WPMS Families–

Earlier today I sent out a notification concerning the status of our Afterschool Academic Assistance program.  Unfortunately that email went out prematurely, and I did not have all the relevant information.  I apologize for any confusion, distress, or inconvenience that caused.

We are NOT cancelling our Afterschool Academic Assistance offering.  We will continue to offer this to students on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:20pm to 4:20pm.  In the event we need to cancel a particular day due to weather or other unforeseen circumstances, we will communicate that on the day of as needed.

Again, I apologize for any inconvenience this caused our community.

Thank you,

Bill Phalen

The original email:

Ken Witt gets raise, bonus in new contract with WPSD

On 1/17, the Woodland Park school board voted to approve a new contract for superintendent Ken Witt. Thanks to the Colorado Open Records Act, we were able to obtain a copy to see the details of this contract for ourselves. It appears pretty similar to his current contract, with the biggest changes being an increase in salary from $155k to $170k, a guaranteed minimum 5% raise per year (which is 5% more than teachers are guaranteed), and up to 15% annual bonus. Duration of this new contract is two years.

You can read the new contract here; for comparison, check out his old contract here.

A look into district finances – Merit Academy revenue

The district documents all money going to Merit, and all money withheld, in their flowthrough spreadsheets. It’s interesting comparing last year to this year. Here are the two files to open and look at while reading this post:

April 2023 (this is the latest one I have for last fiscal year…scroll towards the end of this link)

August 2023

You’ll notice changes in the first section, revenue being directed to Merit. They’ve been given portions of more line items than before.

The Buyback Services section is where the largest changes can be found. Money withheld for administrative oversight has decreased from 5% to 0.8%. Buildings/grounds maintenance has decreased by 61%. Overall, Merit is paying $323,883.14 less in buyback services this year than last year. Note however that last year, they were being charged $150,000 for construction/renovation costs. It’s unknown if that amount covered everything done to the Middle School or not. So perhaps a more fair number to use in this comparison would be to say they’re paying $173,883.14 less in buyback services this year.

Also note that Merit is not paying the same proportion of transportation costs as the rest of the schools in the district. As for food service, while they’re participating in that program, there is no written agreement in place and no costs being shared with Merit (that program is mostly but not completely funded by the statewide free lunch program).