Tag Archives: Ken Witt

‘We have to get in there and face the threat’: 11 Call For Action gets inside Colorado school resource officer programs

While CSPD and EPSO were open and transparent about their training and procedures surrounding their SRO programs, it was not the same for Woodland Park School District RE-2.

On Aug. 17, 2023, the district sent out a one-page letter to the community alerting parents that they would be adding armed security officers to serve as school resource officers there.

11 News requested through an open records request the training and certification documentation for those hired to provide this armed security.

In their note to the community, the district writes, “These dedicated professionals must have completed rigorous training programs from law enforcement or other specialized training.”

Our newsroom wanted to know if these officers were certified to use rifles, and since they are not sworn officers like the majority of other local SRO programs, 11 News also requested additional information from the district about how they handle the training and certification for these armed guards.

The district responded: “No records existed.”
— Read on www.kktv.com/2023/10/05/we-have-get-there-face-threat-11-call-action-gets-inside-colorado-school-resource-officer-programs/

Witt and Miller address the staff – August 22, 2023

On August 22nd, 2023, Ken Witt and Brad Miller addressed the district staff in the annual convocation. Ken Witt talked about updates to benefits, PACE, universal pre-K, their partnership with Mindsight (counseling company), SROs and security, and introduced his administrative staff. At timestamp 14:30 in the audio recording below, he handed it off toe Ariel Elliott, regional director of PACE (Professional Association of Colorado Educators), to discuss that program.

Brad Miller takes the mic at about 25:15. He talked first about policy KDDA (which the district is being sued over). He says the point of it was simple things like if there’s a snow day, they didn’t want misinformation going around about whether school was canceled (note that KDDA was cited when Witt fired a staff member last spring).

The most important part to listen to starts at 35:06, where Miller outlines the district’s new policy for ‘students who want to express or identify their gender differently than what they were born.’ He acknowledges Colorado law on the matter and says they’ll comply (he calls it ‘unavoidable law’), but it won’t be a slam-dunk for kids who fall into this category. Before the school will respect the kids’ wishes, administration will hold a meeting with the parents of that kid because, as Brad Miller put it 37:50 into this audio recording, “it’s the parents’ decision to make” (not the kids?!). I’ve heard too many stories about kids in families where they’re not free to talk about such things…I worry for the mental health and safety of kids that are facing these conversations.

Teachers union suit suits slick Woodland Park super | NOONAN | Opinion | coloradopolitics.com

Witt is using the Woodland Park school board as a tool to take over the district and impose his anti-democratic, anti-public school ideology. He’s exploiting the BOCES concept to use public money to serve his conservative agenda and line his own pocketbook. His schools are not high performing or meritorious. They are not inclusive of all American children. They are an example of the failure of our state’s school accountability system to ensure accountability for public funds and democratic values.
— Read on www.coloradopolitics.com/content/tncms/live/

More on the ACLU lawsuit against the district

As previously reported here, the ACLU has filed suit against the district on behalf of former employee Logan Ruths, regarding his one year banishment from district property. This story has been covered by NBC, the Colorado Sun, the Colorado Springs Indy, KOAA, and the Gazette (and given that media focus, I suspect I missed some!).

Court papers were served to the district Friday, and also Friday board president Rusterholtz announced he’d like to retract the ban against Ruths. Right now, that action is pending review by board attorney Brad Miller and feedback from the other board members.

Here’s KOAA’s news coverage of this case (see story here):

You can watch the board meeting that promoted this action below, timestamp 16:10 is about where this all started:

You can read the entire court filing here.

WPSD faces new lawsuit

A new lawsuit was filed against the Woodland Park School District earlier this week in district court (Civil Action No. 19-3634). It’s essentially a First Amendment / Freedom of Religion lawsuit, brought by a parent in the district (Jessica Pool), against superintendent Ken Witt and Columbine Principal Ginger Slocum. You can read the full filing here. As always, it’s best to reserve judgement until the facts come out in court and a jury decides on this case.

What’s going on with SROs in WPSD?

What’s going on with School Resource Officers (SROs) in Woodland Park schools? These have typically been Woodland Park police officers, providing a partial security presence at our schools. Last year, there were two SROs (I believe the school only paid for one, the cost of the other was on the city)…and by spring, both of those were no longer working as SROs in the district. With the board and superintendent eliminating the large mental health support program in our school district, parents have been justifiably concerned about the safety of our kids. David Illingworth and Ken Witt have repeatedly said that the city and sheriff are both unable to provide officers. CORA requests are casting doubt on this statement, as you’ll see below.

The question has been, what is the district’s plan for providing security to our students? Illingworth hinted at a plan in the works using private security in the April City Council meeting, and mentioned (time stamp 12:32 in this video) that the WPPD and Sheriff don’t have enough personnel to provide a full time officer in each of the six school (this is true). The board met in executive session with Sheriff Mikesell in the May 10th meeting to discuss security. The Sheriff does have his own private security company, so it’s been suspected the district would leverage that to help keep our kids safe – but no mention of this appeared in the budget in June.

What CORA requests have revealed is, reassuringly, the board DOES appear to have a plan in the works to have one security guard in each school (there is no indication that any plan has been finalized). There aren’t enough law enforcement officers in this small community to serve those roles (assuming one person per building), and it’s not clear at this point whether those roles will be entirely private security, or whether they’ll be a mix of private security and law enforcement officers. It’s also not clear what cost this will carry.

Dig deeper though and you see friction between our police department and Ken Witt. It seems to have started with the issue of plugging the ‘gap’ in SROs to close out the school year (though perhaps started earlier this year when the chief rejected the district’s request for police presence at all board meetings). On May 3rd, WP Police Chief Deisler offered officers on overtime three days a week to work as SROs, but the district didn’t take him up on that offer. Witt went on to spread incorrect information about that situation to a community member who had emailed him about their concerns (email link is below):

We were very disappointed when Chief Chris Deisler informed the school district this year that the WP PD no longer has the manpower to provide SROs given their law enforcement demands and limited personnel in Woodland Park.

Ken Witt, July 11, 2023

Chief Deisler replied to Witt:

Shortly after the announcement that Ofc. DeJesus was coming back to Patrol, I announced an internal lateral transfer “intent to apply” process for the now-vacant SRO position at WPHS since the final security plan for school safety and security had not been finalized for school year 23-24. Not one eligible police officer applied for this assignment. You can also see that in order to continue to support the school, I offered a city-paid overtime detail for three officers a week to be present at the campus to help get through end of the year at no cost to the District. No one at the school ever finalized this process with me.

WPPD Police Chief Deisler, July 12, 2023

If you read the entirety of the email exchange (obtained via CORA and can be read here), it’s pretty clear that Chief Deisler tried working with the district on this matter but the district did not engage him. Worse though, Ken Witt, in my opinion at least, has portrayed our local police department as uncooperative and unable to help, which is not the impression I get when I read the email from the Police Chief – quite the opposite, Chief Deisler actually seemed eager to help. It’s unknown why the district made the decisions they did about this.

While it’s reassuring that the board is still working on a security plan (Chief Deisler and Sheriff Mikesell appear to be collaborating on it), I hope that plan includes our local law enforcement officers, not just private security.

I encourage all community members to read the entirety of the email exchange for themselves.

DAVIS: The Specialists: A Woodland Park Investigation

From the outside, the events unfolding over the past year and a half in Woodland Park – where a far-right school board won control in late 2021, and has since pursued an aggressive agenda of banning certain books, demonizing the local teachers’ union, cutting funding for mental health services, skirting open records and public meetings laws, approving a highly controversial charter school without due process, and firing staff and faculty for speaking out against them – seem like an extension of the right-wing’s long standing animosity to the public school system. On closer inspection, though, what’s happening in Woodland Park looks like something new: an evolution of that old fight, where the goal is no longer to shrink and dissolve the public schooling system, but to seize control of the system and use it to train up a new generation of conservative voters. 
— Read on coloradotimesrecorder.com/2023/06/davis-the-specialists-a-woodland-park-investigation/54189/

Various tidbits from a recent CORA request

…modeling professionalism is important, and blue or green hair is not a good model for success in today’s workplace, if we wish leadership opportunity for our students.

Ken Witt, in reference to a new staff policy requiring only natural hair hues.

So does this mean purple hair is OK?

Here’s some insight into the hiring process:

I appreciate the chance to review our top two candidates for the open HS math position. Both seem reasonable candidates. However, Mr Hornbeck-Kaiser, having an exemplary education background as a long-time Colorado rural teacher, likely has a lot more commitment to this area than a Texas transplant. Let’s go with Mr Hornbeck-Kaiser, unless a superior Colorado HS Math teacher has presented him/herself.

Ken Witt, intervening into the hiring process in the High School

In March, Ken Witt signed an updated contract for his other job, Executive Director at ERBOCES, reducing his salary from $155,000 to $112,750 – presumably because he’s not working there full-time. There has been no modification to his contract with WPSD, apart from the one year extension.

We were tipped off to one interesting fact about the flag that Witt used $600 of district money to frame (Witt owns this flag personally and it’s just on loan to the district). It’s a design that was never made an official US flag, having only 42 stars. With the star count being made ‘official’ on July 4th each year, this flag was never an official US flag as our 43rd state, Idaho, received statehood on July 3rd, 1890. Given that Witt is more of an engineer than an educator, his fascination with this 42 star flag may have more to do with the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference, or just a love of the asterisk, than any concern about historical merit.