Yesterday, interim superintendent Ken Witt toured the Middle School after school hours with administration staff from both the Middle School and Merit, looking at how the space would be re-divided to give Merit more room. Today, we received this anonymous update:

I have it on good authority that merit is taking over the severe special needs room with their required by law apartment set up. They will also get a staff bathroom, a boys bathroom, conference room(used for students hearing and speech needs, a book room and 4 6th grade classrooms. In order to stay in compliance they will have to rebuild the required by law special needs facilities in a different location. This will be major construction and extremely costly. This board can turn down over a million dollars in grants so im sure we can afford more construction costs. The second year in a row teachers will have to box up and move theor entire classroom. As of now, the enrichment spaces will stay in tact though merit wants access to the ensemble room. In addition they have applied for a contract with chartwells to be able to conduct linch service but they want to share the commons in order to do this. All of these changes are unnecessary, beyond costly and detrimental to the safety and well being of the middle school students. Witt refuses to meet with parents about concerns unless it is documented in writing through email. If you disagree with these decisions then please email him directly!

Some bonus info: academic successes were presented at the dac meeting showing specific test scores and academic measurements in which merit scored below wpms across the board. Considering this regime is academic focused, youd think they would present some results to back up theor interventions. Rather they just shit all over the districts successes while taking away all the amazing people and programs that got the district to where it is. One of the only districts to raise academic success through the pandemic in the region and state. But lets change everything to match a school model that is producing worse results. Ok rant over but this is egregious at best.

anonymous

Merit’s in-person enrollment is currently 289 or 292, depending on which source you listen to, in a space that can handle up to 471 students (but let’s be fair, the actual usable number would be a quite a bit less). How is Witt justifying this change? And why will the district be paying for this? This decreases funding available for our traditional public schools…WHY?

You can email Ken Witt at kwitt@wpsdk12.org.

When discussing his decision to move sixth grade out of the Middle School, Ken Witt has consistently referred to overcrowding in that school. So let’s visit that point, and see what the facts say about space in the Middle School.

Last year, the board used a study from Cooperative Strategies to justify partitioning the Middle School into two schools, making room for Merit Academy. According to that report, the Merit Academy side of the school has capacity for 471 students, while the Middle School side has capacity for 432 students. These numbers do not take into account present or potential future modular buildings on the north side of the school build (Merit’s side).

The Colorado Department of Education (CDE) has data available on their website for attendance in all schools in the state. Merit Academy has 331 students, of which only 292 are onsite (the rest are homeschool enrichment); the Middle School has 391. The data shows Merit is at only 70% capacity; the Middle School is at 91% capacity (which is a bit below the 94% capacity the board predicted it would be at when it made the decision to split the building for Merit). The data does not show overcrowding at present.

Enrollment numbers for the ’23-24 school year are unknown, so nothing to base any decisions upon. However, we’ll look at what we know. Merit shows 27-41 students per grade. They are new to high school, and really only have a 9th grade this year. Assuming all their kids ‘bubble up’ into higher grades, they’d potentially be adding around 40 kids. Maybe they’d flush out some of the other grades closer to that 41 number. I consistently read that 90% facility usage is a nice target to shoot for, so let’s assume that (and ignore that our board wanted to put the Middle School at 94% capacity). Merit has a capacity of 423 students at 90% capacity, or an increase of 131 students (not counting the homeschool enrichment enrollment) – an increase of 45%! Perhaps they’ll hit that number, we just don’t know at this point.

I know the board is applauding Merit for ‘growth’ in the school district, but as page 17 of this presentation shows, 293 district students chose to go to ERBOCES (which Merit Academy was a part of at that time) in the ’21-22 school year – part an increase of 352 students opting out of the district compared to the previous school year. It’s clear, Merit pulled students from the district when they opened, then brought them ‘back’ into the district once the district absorbed Merit. This was not some radical growth in the district, it was just shuffling kids around, and to assume that Merit can now find 131 new students? Perhaps they’ll draw some from the Public Schools, but considering they’ve already been around for two years now, I question how many there left to get that haven’t already made that switch.

How does enrollment look for the Middle School? If we assume all current fifth graders move on to the Middle School, that’s 113 students being added, while 121 eighth graders leave for the High School. This bumps Middle School capacity down to 89%.

Actual attendance numbers for next year are unknown. What IS known is that the ‘overcrowding’ argument is based on very ambitious recruitment goals for Merit Academy; whether they’ll succeed is a bit question. If they needed more capacity, they do have existing modular structures on the north side, with space to add more. Perhaps they’ll need more space in the Middle School in the future, but for the ’23-24 school year, the data does not support any radical changes to the makeup of that building.

What this analysis is lacking – firsthand reports, that boots on the ground perspective that only the staff at the school can provide. Given the hostility Witt has shown towards them, I felt it best to not approach staff with questions and to just lay out the facts here instead. I also realize this doesn’t not take into account things like classroom size or number of rooms per grade, though when it comes to analyzing Merit, since they have control over those factors (they can limit enrollment, unlike the Middle School) I felt it OK to leave that part out.