Another fantastic turnout at the board meeting! It was a real marathon session too…the regular meeting lasted about five hours, before the board broke off to have an executive session to discuss the pending contract with Merit Academy. Those five hours sure were interesting though! For starts, attorney Brad Miller has recused himself from anything having to do with Merit, though the board is retaining him to deal with…well it’s not clear what he’ll be doing, a point board member Austin raised, as previous counsel is also retained. I suspect it’s because Miller is the one who wrote this contract for Merit so they might have questions. But there’s a new law firm brought on to deal with closing this deal with Merit (I didn’t note the name at the meeting but I’ll get it).
We don’t have video of the entire meeting, just the audio recording which can be listened to here. Below is a video of one of the more contentious agenda items, re-appoval (again) of the Merit MOU, and a brief discussion about CORA requests. You really should watch this video though…Chris Austin raise excellent points, and when he tried to get Illingworth to answer whether he’d seen a copy of the Merit contract draft, Illingworth got VERY defensive, and even started cross-examining Austin, totally unprofessional for a school board environment. His behavior really says a lot about him. He also lied about this website, saying we posted a copy of the Merit contract…I sure wish we had it! Fortunately the audience called him out on this lie.
One interesting point in the video above is around the ten minute mark, with Illingworth made it clear that approving the MOU meant approving Merit’s application to be a charter school. That application is a big deal, legally, and there was no mention of that in the board’s agenda (plus, charter school law requires public notice prior to application approval). So, this is the third time this board has violated the Sunshine Law on the exact same MOU (see section 2C of this link). There is a pending lawsuit to force the board to follow the law in this respect. The board is fabricating a process to convert a contract school (Merit) into a charter school, bypassing the normal charter school process. It’s unclear why they think they can do this, though keep in mind the attorney (Miller) who advised them that this was OK has since removed himself from anything having to do with this matter (reason unknown), so this whole thing is super sketchy right now. The board really needs to restart the process following established Colorado Charter School Law.
Surprisingly, there were not enough speakers signed up to fill the allotted one hour time slot! I spoke to several who told me they avoided signing up because they felt others had more important things to say…oh well, next time will be different I’m sure! The board discussed the possibility of adding follow-up meetings (town hall style) for additional public comment if needed in the future. It’d be great if there was a true question/answer format, but that’s all TBD. The speakers that did talk are worth listening to in the link above. Personal stories worth hearing, as well as a dry but informative five minutes of the various violations this board is making in how they’re conducting business.
Superintendent Neal revealed that he was not selected for the Anchorage position he was interview for, so he’ll be staying on with this district (we view this as a good thing). There was talk about raises for staff, though that really depends on statewide funding and total enrollment which hasn’t been announced yet. The administrative staff is going to look into options there so expect more on this in May’s board meeting, probably.
