Tag Archives: Merit

Merit Academy

Transportation cost sharing (again!)

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know I’ve been hounding the board and Witt about transportation cost sharing for over a year now (read part 1, part 2, and part 3 if you need to get up to speed on this). I believe it’s unfair to not ask Merit Academy to pay a proportionate share of this cost, and when I’ve confronted the board, I’m met with either silence or denial and spin.

I first pointed this out to Witt and the board in May of 2023 both in public comment at a board meeting and via email, but did not receive any constructive feedback. In my email, I said,

“parent fees, mentioned to be $50 per child, only cover approximately 1.3% of the total cost, and this is expected to rise slightly next year. The state contributes around 15% towards the total cost, leaving the remaining burden to be shouldered by the General Fund of the five traditional public schools. Astonishingly, Merit Academy has not been asked to share this cost, which is undeniably unfair.”

In the May 10 board meeting where I talked about this in public comment, the board broke with their own rules and replied to the concerns I had raised, and Witt said,

“…every student and every family in Woodland Park pays the same amount to ride those busses…”…which totally ignored my point about where the bulk of the money for this service was coming from.

We saw this topic come up again in the 6/12/2024 board meeting, when Witt gave the budget presentation to the board (our CFO’s last day was in the weeks prior to this). When talking about transportation, Witt said, “…our transportation costs are fully covered by state reimbursement”, and went on to explain that the transportation fund was for transportation to and from the school, and all activity, extracurricular, and sports transportation costs were covered by fees and the general fund.

The thing is, he’s wrong. As I had pointed out to him back in 2023, the state only provides a small portion of the actual cost of transporting students to and from the school. He’s stuck to his story this whole time, but in the past year, I’d learned much more about school finance and was able to challenge him after the meeting, via email. I was able to point to actual expenses recorded in our General Ledger which showed how some of the monthly charges for transportation were charged to the transportation fund, but the majority was being charged to the General Fund. Further, I was able to show the worksheet used for calculation of the state reimbursement the previous year, which further shows how the state reimburses only a small amount of the actual cost. Faced with these facts, he finally admitted he was wrong, saying “So, simply stated, approximately one third of the to and from school transportation was covered by the state-provided funds (accounted in Fund 25), and two-thirds were not covered by the state-provided funds (accounted in Fund 10). I apologize for the error.” (I think the one-third is high but it’s in the ballpark so no need to dwell on that).

Why does this matter? As enrollment in Merit Academy grows and enrollment in the public schools declines, the per-pupil cost of daily transportation services is increasing, while total revenue into that General Fund decreases (due to declining enrollment). This reduces the money available for teacher salaries, by hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s just another way that Witt and this board are providing preferential treatment to Merit Academy, and sabotaging the other public schools.

Why is Merit getting involved with the Gateway closure decision?

Merit Academy headmaster Gwynn Pekron last week sent a very long email to parents in that school, with most of it devoted to her analysis of the decision to close Gateway Elementary. This is a decision which in no way impacts Merit Academy or its students and parents, as Merit is its own 501c(3) non-profit corporation, outside of the control or influence of the elected school board overseeing Gateway Elementary and the other public schools in Woodland Park. So why did Pekron put all this focus into Gateway?

Dear Merit Academy Families…

While a correspondence to you is long overdue on my end, and for that I apologize, this writing is not necessarily one of Merit Academy virtues or strengths, but is a note regarding the recent events of our local district. As hard as I have tried to make this a short presentation, circumstances warranted further discourse. Per encouragement of other Merit Academy families and community members, my intention is to present to you historical data, as I understand it, that may have contributed to the present state of the District.

SALES TAX

The first topic to highlight is the Council’s discussion of the educational sales tax. This revenue is critical to past, current, and future students in this community. It is a fair tax, a consumer tax, a revenue of which nearly 33% stems from tourists, is business friendly, and is considerate of fixed income persons compared to property taxes.

The council meets this Thursday (March 7) to discuss adopting or tabling the Ordinance that would repeal this critical education funding for our district students. Council members have stated several times that an agreement between WPSD and Council regarding the proposed updates within the intergovernmental arrangement would mean the this Ordinance will be tabled. From the recent meeting, it seems the attorneys are tasked to collaborate on the terms. The expectations and hope, then, is to see the Ordinance defeated on March 7.

STATE OF THE DISTRICT

The second topic is the state of the District, particularly the recent announcement regarding the consolidation of elementary schools. In order for me to understand the greater situation that compelled this decision, I’ve relied on my past experiences in the District and current examination of the District’s historical figures. I pass this to you, with hopes it can add to the dataset you are examining in your own pursuit of understanding.

Consultants

Over the past ten years, districts across the state have had to consolidate schools. Facing similar uncertainty, the prior Board and Superintendent hired a facility consulting firm to assess district facilities in Fall of 2021. The consultants assessed building condition, building capacity/usage (functional vs max), and the focus of expenditures (building vs staff vs programs) throughout the district.  

            Inherited Dilemma

From their presentations, it was evident that whomever was elected to the Board of Education in 2021 and beyond would inherit a difficult decision regarding facilities, programming, and staffing. The consultants noted the decades of declining enrollment and the trajectory of building capacity, further submitting that school consolidation, however unpopular, may be a necessary option to be able to maintain or even advance programming to students.

As predicted by those consultants, we’ve come to the point when District leadership has to address the issues that have been deferred until this point. Even though WPSD has one of the lower rates of decreasing enrollment in the region, the reduction continues to impact the District. As the consultants mentioned, long term decline and a lack of intervention has a rippling effect that now requires leadership to balance the enrollment with the expenditures of facilities, staffing, and programming. 

            Matching Operations to Enrollment

It is presumed that the District’s recent decision to consolidate elementary schools was made with those very considerations mentioned by the consultant: balance enrollment with proper staffing, consider financial responsibilities vs liabilities, and review solutions to equate the district’s operations to the decades of decline. It must have played a part in the decision to divert students from Gateway to Columbine and Summit, but in that, I merely speculate.

  • Gateway Elementary School requires nearly $5 Million in maintenance and improvements, according to the prior Board and previous superintendent’s facility study. 
  • There are 155 students (K – 6 th grade) at Gateway with an additional 50 Preschool students. Forecasted enrollment predicts another slight decrease in enrollment.
  • It appears that K-6 staffing at Gateway may cost over $1,825,000 /yr, or $11,770/student.   Compare that to the pupil revenue of $10,277/student + MLO and Sales Tax = $12,117/student.

Gateway’s cost of staffing  for the school leaves very little revenue (less than $400/student, or less than $62,000 as a school) for any operational costs. What else is needed to operate a school that is not covered with school-only salaries and benefits?

  • Business Support (payroll, taxes, accounting, purchases, requisition)
  • Curriculum: books, programs, licenses, teacher resources
  • Supplies, equipment
  • Technology, internet, support, supplies, equipment
  • Testing, support oversight, CDE reports
  • Student intervention supplies and equipment
  • Student programs, tutoring, clubs, field trips
  • Grounds keeping, winterizing, parking lots, playground
  • Building operations and maintenance
  • Security, general administration, and central office salaries and benefits
  • and so much more…

Gateway Elementary is currently operating at 32.9% of functional student capacity K-6 with Preschool = 44.5%. Max functional student capacity for the building is 471 students.

                Gateway’s max student capacity is 617 (operating currently at 25%)  

                Note: it is ineffective to run a school at max capacity. Suggested capacity rate is a target of 70-85% of the functional student capacity level.

Corresponding to the decades of student enrollment loss is the increase in staff salaries, benefits, program expenses, supplies, and operational expenses, causing a deeper divide between Gateway’s primary revenues and its operational expenses. 

Consolidation 

  • In 2021, the prior board’s facility consultants mention the likely need of consolidating elementary schools because of the lack of student numbers to support school operations, programming, and staffing. While this was an unpopular option, it was highlighted as a necessary consideration.
  • Because of declining enrollment and increase expenses to operate a school, school closure has been a topic of conversation since 2010.
  • In 1986, District enrollment was 1,950 and WPSD had two school buildings: Gateway Elementary and the Jr High /Sr. High (WPHS).  This year (2023-24), WPSD has a total of 2,020 students Prek-12, with five buildings.

Seek to Understand

Gateway is not the only school with a widening rift between loss in enrollment and growth in operational expenditures. This district-wide issue required a system-wide repair. As many districts across the state have realized, consolidation provides greater allocation of funds towards student programming and staffing, rather than on the crippling costs of maintaining or operating underutilized schools.

The District is addressing an issue that has been deteriorating for many years. By redirecting students from Gateway to Columbine and Summit, by moving 7 th and 8 th grades back to the WPHS (as it also drifted below 45% functional capacity), and by requiring a growing Merit Academy to assume the full building’s operational cost as sole tenants,  the District Board of Education appears to be upholding it’s duties as prescribed in Statutes. It seems to be controlling expenditures to match student enrollment without compromising student programming or academic excellence. 

These district decisions are never easy to make, and there seems to be no state-wide shortage of opportunity for this difficult determination to be made. Each district manages consolidation differently, typically working to bring the district back to a balance of enrollment and operations. As community members, we can merely speculate and work towards understanding.

Very Humbly Yours,

Gwynne Pekron, PhD

Industrial/Organizational Psychologist

Headmaster: Merit Academy

Hodie Determinat Cras: Today Determines Tomorrow

Federal Covid relief grant sharing in WPSD

Interestingly, in the last fiscal year (ending June 30, 2023), the district made a last-minute transfer of $270,155 of COVID relief funds to Merit Academy. Merit submitted the invoice on 6/30/2023, though it wasn’t processed and paid until August. I can’t find any mention of it in the FY23 budget…you’ll note other passthrough money, like the sales tax revenue, is noted as “Charter school allocation”. It’s not clear why the district didn’t do the same for this federal grant money.

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).

WPSD BOE votes to give entire Middle School building to Merit Academy, and cut fees charged to Merit

The August 9th school board meeting contained a vote on changes to the Contract and the Facilities Usage Agreement with Merit Academy. The board did not read the changes, did not present them in the meeting, and did not make them publicly available prior to the meeting. Nevertheless, the board packet contained very detailed redlines of the proposed changes, as learned via a recent CORA request.

When you look at the actual changes, it becomes pretty obvious why the board hid this information. Their decision to move 6th grade out of the Middle School this past March created quite a stir…and if people realized what the board did for Merit, I suspect there’d be even more of an uproar. Here’s what the new FUA says:

As Merit grows, the new FUA gives them whatever space they need, with no regard for the 7/8th graders currently occupying that portion of the building. They’re currently expanding one grade level per year as each cohort moves up; they might add preschool in the future. The BOE put in place a legal agreement which will squeeze the 7/8th graders out of that building. More importantly though, they have not disclosed any plan for what will happen to the 7/8th grades currently in that building.

Here’s the currently floorpan for this ’23-24 school year:

On the financial side of things, the BOE gave Merit two sweet deals. First, Merit will no longer be asked to share the district facilities costs on a per-pupil basis. Instead, their share will be computed based upon the square footage they are using.

The district has unused building space, but Merit won’t have to help shoulder the cost of that – they get the benefit of using a district building rent-free, but get special treatment compared to the tenants (schools) of the other buildings. Second, their administrative withholding decreases from 5% to 3.5% (this is expected to give Merit about $61k, though final amount depends on pupil count).

Obtained via CORA, you can view the new Facilities Usage Agreement or the new Contract.

Information about PSAT scores in the district

We need to set the record straight on PSAT scores.

To start with, congratulations WPHS! Our 9th graders scored great, as a recent CORA request revealed! Their mean score of 937 far surpassed the state’s mean of 890, as did all other benchmarks. Well done, Panthers!

Merit Academy also scored great, slightly exceeding WPHS with a mean of 954 vs. 937! They published their school’s PSAT scores on their website, as shown below:

Now, the numbers are good, and the students and teachers deserve credit for a job well done! But there’s some misinformation here which I’d like to straighten out.

For starters, their comparison to the District scores is completely incorrect – I don’t know what district they’re comparing themselves to, but it’s definitely not Woodland Park RE-2 (as our WP data show above). I suspect this error may lie at the CDE level and that this form was generated there, as its style matches the WPHS one. I hope they correct this error quickly so the public is not misled about their academic performance vs. the high school’s.

The other important piece of information to look at is the participation rate – what percentage of 9th graders actually took the test. Using data from the CDE (here, or original source website here), Merit Academy has 27 9th graders. Merit says that 19 took the test, which means only 70% of their students took the PSAT. The district high school has 142 9th graders per the CDE (not 257 as Merit’s data shows), of which 124 took the test, for a participation rate of 87%. Almost one third of Merit students didn’t take this test…it’s hard to say how indicative these test results really are of the student population as a whole. Overall, a good, solid effort, but difficult to draw conclusions from if you ask me.

UPDATE – Merit has corrected their website to show that District scores are pending, and they also claim a 100% participation rate, saying that the ones who didn’t test were home school programs. I’m working to get details to confirm homeschool enrichment numbers.

Transportation Costs for ’23-24 school year

Using data from the district’s FY24 adopted budget from June, I put together a simple graphic showing how the board has decided to split transportation costs between Merit Academy and the five traditional public schools. They are not splitting it based upon enrollment as one might expect.

I had previously written about this topic here and here. I think everyone in the district loves and supports the idea of including Merit Academy students in the school bus program. No one debates that. The only debate is whether those Merit Academy students should be paying the same out of their budget that the other kids do. The board feels they should not, as this graphic shows.

Transportation Cost Sharing – part 2

My first stab at writing about this topic ended up being a bit long – read it here – so I thought I’d try to do a better job of summarizing this (see that link for source material for data here)

Transportation Costs in Woodland Park RE-2 School District – ’22-23 school year

  • Expenses
    • $1,563,177
  • Source of funds to cover expenses
    • Carryover fund balance from RE-2 previous year: $104,758
    • Transportation fees collected from parents: $20,000 ($50 per kid)
    • State Reimbursement: $235,000
    • Grants: $1,000
    • Money to be used from RE-2 General Fund: $1,202,419

The point here is, the bulk of the money comes from the RE-2 General Fund – and Merit Academy is not being required to share that portion of the cost when they participate in this program next year.

Transportation costs in the Woodland Park School District RE-2

I think we all love the idea of students from Merit Academy being able to take the bus to school…I’ve heard zero complaints about that. The question though, is money. Are Merit kids being asked to pay the same amount as kids in the public schools (or as the board likes to say ‘traditional public schools’)? Is our school board and interim superintendent treating all students fairly? The answer, I believe, is a resounding ‘no’.

To participate in the bus transportation to/from schools, parents pay $50 per child, or a maximum of $100 per family. The district’s signed agreement with Merit Academy, from April 12, 2023, ensures that all parents of all schools abide by these same guidelines, which seems fair on the surface. Perhaps some people view $50 as too high, but the district found in the past that if a nominal fee weren’t charged, many parents would sign up with a ‘just in case’ or ‘why not’ attitude, which resulted in challenges to determine actual capacity and routes required.

Let’s look at what the district has budgeted for transportation expenses in the current ’22-23 school year. If you pour through our ’22-23 budget, you’ll find the board has allocated $1,202,419 from the General Fund, $1,000 from the Grants fund, and $359,758 from the Transportation Fund, for a total Transportation Budget for ’22-23 of $1,563,177. Of that money, they budget for only $20,000 to come from the fees paid by parents (that $50 fee mentioned above). $235,000 is expected to come from the State as a reimbursement (I believe, but am not certain, that this is due to the rural nature of our district). With the 1676 student enrollment in our (traditional) public schools, that works out to $779.94 per student ($1,202,419 from General Fund and $104,758 from current fund balance), being used to cover transportation costs in the district in the ’22-23 school year.

The board put in place an agreement with Merit where Merit students pay $50 if they want to use the service, $0 if they don’t – there is no cost sharing beyond that $50 fee. The students in the (traditional) public schools will be paying $829.94 if they opt in to the bus service, $779.94 if they don’t use the service (due to money being taken out of their General Fund to pay for the transportation costs). Of course, this money doesn’t come directly from the students – but it is money from the general fund that could otherwise be used to fund teachers or counselors in the public schools.

If the board were to split costs equally amongst all students, that would equate to $651.31 per pupil in base fees coming out of each school’s General Fund, plus the $50 for each kid who opts in. To look at it another way, if the district split the base transportation cost based on enrollment numbers at each school, that would result in $215,583.25 more money in the General Fund for the (traditional) public schools, money which could be used to pay for some of the lost counseling/social worker positions.

I recognize this is an approximation – precise costs for the ’23-24 school year would require us to know:

  • Actual costs of Durham services, which per contract can increase 2.5-4% per year
  • Actual enrollment in all schools
  • Number of parents from each school participating (this will impact the $20,000 revenue estimate)
  • State reimbursement ($235,000 for the current school year)
  • Costs of transportation of field trips (which should not be a shared expense)

So keep that in mind…but when we’re comparing $779.94 to zero, those details are just noise, lost in the bigger picture here. The issue here is the foundation of this cost sharing agreement and the inequity it imposes upon the students in this district.

Why did the Woodland Park School Board not ask Merit Academy to share in the transportation expenses? Merit is funded on a per-pupil basis just like the district public schools…why is the board asking our public schools to subsidize transportation costs for Merit Academy? This isn’t fair to the public school children, and isn’t fair to Merit Academy as it might make them look bad when this is the WPSD board’s decision, not theirs.

(if you notice any errors with my math, please reach out to me using the Contact form)

Why did the public schools buy a playground for the charter school?

Merit Academy is its own business entity…they have their own board, their own budget. So tell me, why did the WPSD buy a playground for them? Why didn’t Merit buy it themselves?

Their new playground, designed for ages 5-12, cost $75,347 (invoice 1, invoice 2), and as far as we can tell from the payment records, was paid for entirely by the WPSD. According to CDE data, district enrollment, not counting Merit, is 1676 students. So in other words, each student in the (traditional) public schools paid $44.96 out of funds that could otherwise have been used for their education…while Merit kids paid exactly $0.00.

Why are students of the (traditional) public schools paying for a playground to be used solely by students in a charter school? That is a question I posed to the interim superintendent, and also our school board president, but both refused to answer. So draw your own conclusions.

It’s also worth noting that this appears to be a violation of the Facilities Usage Agreement signed last spring. Section B(b) says, “The School shall be solely responsible to perform and bear the costs associated with the School Improvements.” Section H says, “All School Work performed by School pursuant to this Agreement shall be performed by School and at the School’s sole cost and expense.” It appears the WPSD school board and administration violated the Facilities Usage Agreement, to the benefit of Merit Academy and the detriment of the (traditional) public schools.