Tag Archives: Witt

WPSD decides to opt in to Colorado Free Lunch program

Last November, voters in Colorado passed proposition FF, which was a tax on high earners (above $300k) to fund a statewide free lunch program for public school students. Ken Witt expressed his opposition to this program in discussion with teachers at the beginning of March, but that just mobilized the public to speak out in support of this program. The pressure on the district appears to have worked…they announced that Woodland Park schools will opt in to the free lunch program! A great victory for the kids.

Fiscal Recklessness in Woodland Park

Most of these board members are relatively new to town. Us that have been here a long time remember days not so long ago, when the Middle School roof was leaking. Trash cans were placed in classrooms to catch the drips. The district had no money for a new roof. I recall sitting in on a presentation by Superintendent Bowman at the time…he outlined the expenses on staff, district-wide, at a very detailed level. He convinced me the district was operating as lean as it could be…and yet…there was still no money for a new roof. In the spring of 2016, voters surprisingly stepped up to help! We passed a 1.09% sales tax coupled with a property tax reduction! This has made a huge difference to our schools, and yes, the Middle School got their new roof. 🙂

This current school board has been completely reckless with spending and an insult to taxpayers who deserve more from our elected officials. Let’s look at some examples.

The board spent around $100k of district money to bring Merit Academy into the district. The feasibility study for the middle school cost our district $51,596.53. Caplan and Ernest, lawyers brought on solely for closing the deal with Merit, cost us $32,268.50. Brad Miller incurred some uncertain amount of legal fees until he stepped away from the deal at the end (his legal fees for the first five months of 2022 were about $66k and he was very involved with this beginning in January). The board was not required to give Merit any of the sales tax revenue…they could have withheld enough of that sales tax revenue to reimburse the district for expenses incurred bringing in Merit.

Miller’s legal advice to the board led to them violating Open Meetings Law in January, leading to a preliminary injunction and subsequent legal fees incurred by defending themselves in court. The exact cost is unknown, as Miller did not invoice separately for this court case and he redacts details from the invoices we request through CORA.

In June, Illingworth called for a special board meeting, where they decided to remove Superintendent Neal from the district. Having no cause for doing so, it cost the district $275k to break his contract (plus whatever legal fees were incurred by Miller for this).

Having put in place two very competent co-superintendents, Del Garrick and Tina Cassens, the board then proceeded to hire a new temporary interim superintendent, Ken Witt. Which on the surface is not necessarily financially bad, this board found a way to really screw taxpayers over on this one. They’re paying Witt an annual rate of $155k, plus a $500 car allowance and $100 cell phone allowance. The contract makes it very difficult to remove Witt, as doing so would require 120 day notice or comparable financial compensation! To top it all off, Witt is allowed to keep working at ERBOCES, where is also being paid $155k, gets a $500 car allowance, and a cell phone provided to him. Taxpayers are paying Witt more than $310k to work two fulltime jobs. You can read Witt’s contract with Woodland Park here, or read his ERBOCES contract here (that contract has been extended). Our district alone is paying a full time salary to someone that’s barely working here part time.

1/11/2023 Board Meeting recap

After the shitshow that was the 12/21/22 board meeting, this one proved only slightly calmer (link to agenda). Though the police were called to this one when one audience member spoke up and refused to leave. Tensions were high leading up to this…not only was it going to be Witt’s first appearance as the new interim superintended, but he was going to presenting some unknown policy changes (first reading, not a vote). Also, the board was going to take action on a “Social Studies Academic Standard Resolution” to be read by board director Sue Patterson. What resolution, you say? We didn’t know, that’s all the info we had and there had been no discussion leading up to this.

So, prior to the meeting, we reached out to Patterson and Rusterholtz, asking if they could share any information about that resolution. They didn’t reply, but the board secretary did, sending us the name of the standard and a link to it – it’s the American Birthright standard. We turned to Google to educate us further…and wow, did we find a lot! But we’ll write up something different about that. Needless to say, people kinda freaked out that this might be adopted in our district, and attendance at the meeting was high.

– Some great speeches in the public comments! Listen to this, it’s actually pretty short as the board cut the allotted time to 3 minutes per speaker.

– Some minor policy changes proposed, including one making it sound like the agenda wouldn’t have to be written by the superintendent and/or board president (we’ll need to read the exact words on this one).

– Some BIG policy changes proposed by Witt around charter school process. Not sure why they care when they didn’t follow district process with Merit Academy? But what they are proposing now would allow charter schools to apply at any time of year (previously just fall) as long as the superintendent was OK with it. I expect we’ll get a new charter school before the end of the school year.

– As expected, the board voted to adopt the American Birthright standard, which does not align with Colorado standards and was rejected by the Colorado Board of Education last fall. But more on that in the coming days!

Here’s the video:

Ken Witt in the news (coloradopols)

Coloradopols has a story covering our district’s decision to hire Ken Witt, check it out here.

They sum up the situation perfectly with this quote:

Hiring Ken Witt with the baggage he brings is nothing less than a provocation.

If the parents, students, and teachers of Woodland Park respond like Jeffco did, it could be a very bad bet.