Local Woodland Park School District Battle with the Community Gains National Attention
After the pandemic struck the nation and schools were shuttered, a school reform movement took root. Many say that once schools became remote parents caught a glimpse as to what was actually being taught in classrooms.
Some of the curriculum being taught and other situations that were happening in public schools caught the attention of parents and conservatives nationwide. A major political movement then commenced that would lead to conservative candidates getting elected to school boards to implement changes within the districts.
In April 2022, The Maverick Observer reported that teaching sex education at a young age and critical race theory were two major drivers that influenced a group of conservative school board candidates to run in the 2021 Woodland Park RE-2 School District Board election. In November 2021, the four conservative candidates won the election and quickly started making the changes they had promised during their campaigns.
School Board Announces Positive Changes to Woodland Park City Council
During the regularly scheduled Woodland Park City Council meeting on April 6, 2023, the Woodland Park School Board’s Vice President David Illingworth II made a presentation to city representatives informing them of the changes made within the district since the 2021 election.
He started by introducing Ken Witt as the district’s interim superintendent. Witt, who is also the Executive Director of Education reEnvisioned BOCES in Colorado Springs, was made the permanent superintendent in May.
Illingworth first mentioned the fact that the school district has grown this school year for the first time in several years. “When I joined the Woodland Park School Board we had about 1,800 students in the school district, that was about 1,000 less than the district had 10 years ago,” Illingworth explained. “And we have seen declining enrollment for the last four or five years before the 2021 election. We are very pleased that we have grown. For the first time in 10 years, the Woodland Park School District has grown in full-time student enrollment. It has grown by about 15 percent. We had 1,800 students and we now have over 2,000. And what’s most exciting about that is that the Woodland Park School District is one of the only districts in the Pikes Peak Region that is growing.”
He said that the district has mostly grown due to the fact that they added the Merit Academy as a charter school for the ’22-’23 school year. The school’s charter application was first denied by the previous school board, but then it was chartered into the district in spring 2022 and it is currently sharing part of the Woodland Park Middle School Building.
The school board also gave a substantial raise to all of the district’s teachers for the last school year. Another change implemented by the district starting in the ’23-’24 school year is that all sixth graders will be moving from the middle school to the district’s three elementary schools.
He also explained that for next school year, the district will also be offering school bus transportation to Merit Academy students. Illingworth told the council that transportation for all schools is important so that community members do not get priced out of having school choices.
He also mentioned the challenge of school shootings presenting a danger to students. Illingworth said that they maintain a close relationship with local law enforcement agencies and the board is dedicated to having school resource officers in every school in the district.
Protests Opposing the School Board Garner National Attention
Not everyone in the Woodland Park community agrees that the changes the school board made are positive. In fact, after the board presented to the city council, several members of the community signed up to talk against the board during the next council meeting on April 20, 2023. Various groups have also organized protests against the actions of the board.
The opposition against the board eventually led to a lawsuit last year and an attempted recall of three of the current board members. The recall was deemed unsuccessful due to the petitioners not being able to get enough valid signatures to send the issue to a vote.
Last May, NBC News published an online article and a television news segment about, “How conservatives transformed a Colorado school district.” The article outlines the actions the board took that created the backlash. The article also compared the new school board’s tactics to strategies implemented by former President Donald Trump when the author wrote, “It was a plan ripped from the MAGA playbook designed to catch opponents off guard, according to a board member’s email released through an open records request.”
The news source provided several interviews of former staff and community members who spoke against the board’s recent actions. The district’s superintendent and the current school board members did not speak with the NBC reporter.
The article discussed things like lawsuits against the board and the fact that they chartered Merit Academy into the district. It mentioned how Witt has recently imposed a new “American Birthright” curriculum for social studies, which led to the banning of at least one book that was deemed inappropriate. The article also states how the school board opted out of funding for certain mental health services offered by the district.
The district has reportedly also seen a drastic turnover of staff. “At least four of the district’s top administrators have quit because of the board’s policy changes, according to interviews and emails obtained through records requests,” NBC News reported. “Nearly 40% of the high school’s professional staff have said they will not return next school year, according to an administrator in the district.”
School Board Members Make Appearances on Other National News Programs
After the NBC News article and television segment came out, several members of the community and other news sources labeled the story a “hit piece.” Later in May, The Federalist published an article that coined the NBC News coverage as “replete with factual errors and mischaracterizations that portray the board as nontransparent and hasty in advancing its reforms.”
“Let’s be clear: NBC News is exploiting controversy over education reforms in small-town America for its own agenda — misrepresenting and omitting key details to generate a false narrative of malintent and suspicion,” The Federalist’s reporter Jimmy Sengenberger stated.
Overall, Sengenberger blames the state and local teachers’ unions for creating opposition to the board. “Make no mistake: Union power over Woodland Park Schools has been unjustifiably strong for too long,” the reporter stated. “That influence is diminishing and educational success in conservative Woodland Park jeopardizes their very existence. Teachers’ unions depend upon educational failures to expand membership, cement political power, and advance ideological agendas.”
The school board’s vice president also made an appearance on the Fox and Friends First cable news show last May talking about a resolution the board passed condemning the Colorado Education Association’s public “claims that capitalism exploits children, public schools, land, labor, and resources.”
Board Vice President Illingworth said in the interview with Fox News that he was shocked when the largest teachers union in Colorado passed the resolution to publicly reject capitalism as an economic system. “It’s always communism when the rubber meets the road,” Illingworth told Fox News. “You can call it Marxism, socialism, but when they start actually putting it into practice and implementing it in all the misery and ugliness that comes with it, it’s communism, no doubt about it.”
During the next school year, Witt will be the superintendent and the changes he announced recently will be implemented. Some residents on social media pages have claimed that the district is down over 50 vital positions for the next school year and they are having trouble finding employees to fill those positions.
However, the school district issued a press release in June stating that the district is largely staffed for the new school year this fall with the exception of one elementary school that still needed a few teachers. “Of our six great schools, only two had significant staff turnover, and only one elementary school has more than one or two open classroom teaching positions,” said Superintendent Ken Witt.
Those opposing the school board have already started endorsing new candidates for the next school board election that takes place in November. In November, three of the current school board director seats are up for election with the exception of Board President David Rusterholtz and Director Suzanne Patterson who were elected for four-year terms in 2021.
