On 25 Aug 2021, TrumpenFuehrer <HeilTrumpenFuehrer@gop.net> posted some
news:sg62nu$sm8$31@news.dns-netz.com:

> Info wrote
>
>> Liberals are all communist agents. Bury them.

WOODLAND PARK, Colo. � When a conservative slate of candidates won control
of the school board here 18 months ago, they began making big changes to
reshape the district.

Woodland Park, a small mountain town that overlooks Pikes Peak, became the
first � and, so far, only � district in the country to adopt the American
Birthright social studies standard, created by a right-wing advocacy group
that warns of the �steady whittling away of American liberty.� The new
board hired a superintendent who was previously recalled from a nearby
school board after pushing for a curriculum that would �promote positive
aspects of the United States.� The board approved the community�s first
charter school without public notice and gave the charter a third of the
middle school building.

As teachers, students and parents began protesting these decisions, the
administration barred employees from discussing the district on social
media. At least two staff members who objected to the board�s decisions
were later forced out of their jobs, while another was fired for allegedly
encouraging protests.

These rapid and sweeping shifts weren�t coincidental � instead 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.

�This is the flood the zone tactic, and the idea is if you advance on many
fronts at the same time, then the enemy cannot fortify, defend,
effectively counter-attack at any one front,� David Illingworth, one of
the new conservative school board members, wrote to another on Dec. 9,
2021, weeks after they were elected. �Divide, scatter, conquer. Trump was
great at this in his first 100 days.�

The leaders of the Woodland Park School District are enacting an
experiment in conservative governance in the middle of a state controlled
by Democrats, with little in the way so far to slow them down. The school
board�s decisions have won some praise in heavily Republican Teller
County, but opposition is growing, including from conservative Christians
and lifelong GOP voters who say the board has made too many ill-advised
decisions and lacks transparency.

�I think they look at us as this petri dish where they can really push all
their agenda and theories,� said Joe Dohrn, a Woodland Park father who
described himself as a staunch Republican and �very capitalistic.� �They
clearly are willing to sacrifice the public school and to put students
presently in the public school through years of disarray to drive home
their ideological beliefs. It�s a travesty.�

Teachers grew particularly alarmed early this year when word spread that
Ken Witt, the new superintendent, did not plan to reapply for grants that
covered the salaries of counselors and social workers.

At Gateway Elementary School in March, Witt told staff members he
prioritized academic achievement, not students� emotions. �We are not the
department of health and human services,� he said, as teachers angrily
objected, according to two recordings of the meeting made by staff members
and shared with NBC News.

Someone in the meeting asked if taxpayers would get a say in these
changes, and Witt said that they already did � when they elected the
school board.

Over the past two years, school districts nationwide have become the
center of culture war battles over race and LGBTQ rights. Conservative
groups have made a concerted effort to fill school boards with
ideologically aligned members and notched dozens of wins last fall.

In Colorado, conservatives started making gains earlier because school
board elections are held in off years. Woodland Park offers a preview of
how quickly a new majority can move to reshape a district � and how those
battles can ripple outward into the community. Some longtime residents say
that the situation has grown so tense, they now look over their shoulder
when discussing the school board in public to avoid confrontation or
professional consequences.

David Rusterholtz, the board�s president, believes that chasm predates his
election in November 2021.

�This division is much more than political � this is a clash of
worldviews,� Rusterholtz said at a board meeting in January. He concluded
his remarks with a prayer for the district: �May the Lord bless us and
keep us, may His face shine upon us and be gracious to us.�

Rusterholtz, Illingworth, Witt and three other current school board
members declined interview requests when reached by email and approached
in person at the district�s office. To tell this story, NBC News reviewed
dozens of emails board members exchanged with parents and staff, obtained
through open records requests, and spoke with over 40 Woodland Park
community members, including students, current and former school staff and
administrators, and former school board members.

When asked to respond to criticism from school personnel and parents,
Illingworth, the board's vice president, replied in an email: �I wasn�t
elected to please the teacher�s union and their psycho agenda against
academic rigor, family values, and even capitalism itself. I was elected
to bring a parent�s voice and a little common sense to the school
district, and voters in Woodland Park can see I�ve kept my promises.�

As the school year winds down, many of the Woodland Park School District�s
employees are heading for the exit, despite recently receiving an 8%
raise. 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. 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.

The board�s critics have pinned their hopes on the next election in
November � when three of the five school board members are up for a vote �
to claw back control of the community�s schools.

�This is an active case study on what will happen if we allow extremist
policies to start to take over our public education system,� said David
Graf, an English teacher who recently resigned after 17 years in the
district. �And the scariest part about it, they knew that this community
would bite on it.�

A culture shift on the board
The four candidates who won nonpartisan positions on Woodland Park�s
school board in 2021 had to say little but that they were conservative to
win. The mostly white, middle-class city of 8,000 people up the mountain
pass from Colorado Springs had voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden by 2-
to-1 a year earlier.

But while many conservatives running for school boards across the country
recently were swept into office on a wave of parent complaints about
critical race theory, library book content and policies supporting
transgender youth, Woodland Park had no such activism in 2021. In fact,
few people bothered to attend board meetings, according to Chris Austin, a
pastor and the lone board member who was not up for re-election that year.

�It was a culture of collaboration,� Austin said. �You had freedom to
bring forward your thoughts and evidential data, people listened, we did
not even know each other�s political affiliations. That�s the way I
experienced it for the first nearly two-and-a-half years. Then it shifted
abruptly with the first meeting with the new board.�

Newly elected conservatives on the board acted quickly to approve an
agreement with Merit Academy to become the district�s first charter
school.

Yet, the vote, at a special meeting on Jan. 26, 2022, caught community
members by surprise because the agenda made no mention of Merit � it had
been listed instead as �board housekeeping.�

The district�s teachers union complained in an email to middle school
staff that the board�s action was �underhanded, and at worst illegal.� A
parent sued, aiming to force the board to follow open meetings law. A
trial court judge did not rule on the legality of the board�s actions but
ordered the board to list agenda items �clearly, honestly and
forthrightly.�

In response to the teachers� complaints, Illingworth accused the union of
attempting to organize a �coup,� and instructed then-Superintendent Mathew
Neal to make �a list of positions in which a change in personnel would be
beneficial to our kids� and �help the union see the wisdom in cooperation
rather than conflict."

Illingworth�s emails spread after parents obtained them through open
records requests. Subsequent board meetings attracted boisterous crowds,
as teachers accused board members of creating a hostile environment, while
other community members spoke in favor of the board for supporting �school
choice� and quoted Scripture. A handful of parents, including some
lifelong Republicans, tried to organize a recall, but failed to get enough
signatures to force a vote.

Other parents felt the criticism was overblown.

�I think a lot of people are angry because people don�t like change,� said
Andrea Kendall, a mother with children in both Merit Academy and the
traditional district schools. �I do feel for the teachers to a certain
extent, for sure. I do feel for the board, too, because I feel like
they�re trying their best with what they have, and they�re getting
attacked for it.�

Illingworth said in emails to NBC News that the district�s enrollment has
increased, the district had expanded food and transportation services, and
academic performance has improved. �The facts show the Woodland Park
School District is doing better than ever,� he said.

Neal resigned as superintendent in July 2022. He declined an interview
request, but said in an email, �I know how to captain a ship and also know
when the direction were headed doesn�t align with my philosophy.�

Austin resigned from the board last November for a similar reason: �The
direction of the new board was just incongruent with my value set.�

For Austin�s replacement, the board appointed Mick Bates, who records show
donated $500 to Illingworth last fall and was a recent chair of the county
Republican Party.

And for Neal�s replacement, the board picked Ken Witt.

'Everyone has their line'
A week before Witt was hired, on Dec. 13, students in a class called
Sources of Strength, which is part of a national suicide prevention
program, asked their teacher what should they know about him as the sole
finalist for the superintendent job.

Sara Lee, a longtime teacher at Woodland Park High School, responded, �You
should Google him.�

The students did, and they didn�t like what they learned.

They discovered that Witt, as president of the school board in neighboring
Jefferson County, supported a plan in 2014 to ensure the district�s
curricula would promote patriotism and not encourage �social strife.� Witt
said students who protested the board policies at the time were �pawns� of
the teachers union. After he and two other conservative members of the
board were recalled, Witt became executive director of an organization
that oversees charter, online and other schools and helped launch Merit
Academy.

Woodland Park students staged a protest against Witt�s hiring on the
morning of Dec. 14. An hour later, the administration placed Lee on leave.
The district said she was �inappropriate and insensitive� for sharing
information about Witt, according to a letter of reprimand she shared with
NBC News, and forbade her from talking about the board and its decisions
with students.

The following month, the district transferred Lee to an elementary school,
even though she�d worked in a high school setting for 25 years. She quit,
and got a job at a school that�s 45 minutes away.

�It was my values that were being called into question,� Lee said. �It was
the fact that I was suddenly in a place where I couldn�t have an open and
honest conversation with my students. And that had never happened in the
18 years I�d been in Woodland Park.�

The board held its lone public interview with Witt on the evening of Dec.
19. Afterward, Witt met privately with Rusterholtz, Illingworth and board
member Cassie Kimbrell in the district�s administrative office.

Two days later, the board voted to hire Witt.

But that private meeting � which was captured by a surveillance camera �
became a flash point. Any time three or more members of a school board
gather and discuss the district, the meeting must be open to the public
under Colorado law. People in the community began clamoring for the
district to release the footage.

Witt declined. The district argued in response to one mother�s lawsuit
that the conversation �was of a personal nature,� and that it would be a
security risk to disclose where the surveillance camera was placed.

Teller County District Court Judge Scott Sells disagreed and said he found
it �troubling, the lack of transparency by the school board and the school
district.� Sells ordered the video to be released, but the district
appealed and the case is still pending.

NBC News obtained the footage, which shows Witt, Illingworth and Kimbrell
walking into the receptionist area of the administrative building just
before 8 p.m. Once Rusterholtz joins 7 minutes later, they stand together
conversing for 8 minutes and then walk out of the room. There is no audio.

Logan Ruths, the district�s former information technologist, first watched
the video in late December, because he was in charge of responding to open
records requests.

Ruths said that when he saw it, his first thought was: �This is very
damning for the board."

Ruths, who wears his Eagle Scout ring most days, said he was shocked that
the district refused to release the footage. He believed it was part of a
recent pattern of withholding public information, which he had repeatedly
raised to district administrators and lawyers.

On March 10, Witt summoned Ruths to his office. The district had
terminated his position as a �consolidation� measure, according to audio
shared with NBC News.

Tearfully, Ruths pleaded with Witt �to be honest, for once,� and tell him
the real reason that he was losing his job. Witt didn�t say much. Ruths
called him an �awful human being� before walking out.

Miles Tuttle, Ruths� boss, told Ruths afterward that he was going to
resign. �Everyone has their line,� Tuttle said to him, �and this being
done to you, that was my line.�

Discouraging civic engagement
At the first board meeting in January with Witt as superintendent, the
board voted to adopt the American Birthright social studies curriculum
standard. No social studies teachers had been consulted prior to the vote,
according to three current employees and an administrator who asked to
speak anonymously to protect their employment.

American Birthright materials emphasize patriotism, argue that the federal
government should have no authority over public schools and say teachers
should not encourage civic engagement, such as registering to vote or
petitioning local lawmakers on issues students care about.

�It is terribly important to be a disengaged citizen, and indeed, a
disengaged student,� said David Randall, research director at the National
Association of Scholars, a conservative organization that created the
standards last year.

<https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-
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board-12-ew-456p-c2a761.jpg>

Randall said American Birthright was modeled off state standards in
Massachusetts and Florida. The group received input from dozens of right-
wing groups and activists, including the Claremont Institute, the Family
Research Council and Moms for Liberty. Randall sees it as a bipartisan
alternative to coursework that he described as hijacked by liberal
concepts. Critics, though, say it�s biased toward the right � for example,
it includes Bill Clinton�s impeachment but not Donald Trump�s.

The Colorado State Board of Education rejected American Birthright in
October. The National Council for the Social Studies, a professional trade
group for educators, issued a rare warning against using it.

�They�re trying to push a certain agenda down to these kids,� Amy
Schommer, a mother in Woodland Park, said of the school board�s adoption
of American Birthright. �I�m a conservative but I�m not against my kids
learning something they disagree with. They�re trying to fix problems that
don�t exist here.�

The district�s adoption of American Birthright had immediate fallout for
an elective class called �Civil Disobedience.� Graf, the English teacher,
had created the class in 2015 to trace protest movements like Black Lives
Matter back to America�s founding.

Five days after the board approved American Birthright, a community member
who does not have children complained to Witt about �Civil Disobedience,�
and accused Graf of using �Between the World and Me� by Ta-Nehisi Coates �
about growing up Black in America � as an �indoctrination tool,� according
to emails obtained through open records requests.

A week later, Graf read in The Pikes Peak Courier that Witt had decided
Coates� book would no longer be used because it didn�t conform with
American Birthright. Graf said no one from the administration spoke to him
about how he taught the class.

Graf resigned last month. �They�re taking autonomy away from teachers,
limiting the scope of the free-thinking, controversial discussions that I
think are age-appropriate,� he said, �especially for 16-, 17-, 18-year-
olds, who are about to go out and experience what it�s like to be an
adult.�

Several more high school teachers resigned this year, citing the board as
a reason, according to interviews and copies of resignation letters
reviewed by NBC News. Some in the community, though, saw this as a good
thing.

�I feel like if they�re leaving, it�s because they have an agenda,� said
Deborah Bruner, a Woodland Park grandmother. �What it sounds like to me is
that this board is going to hold teachers accountable for what they teach,
and to teach the truth.�

A contentious meeting
By the time Witt arrived at Gateway Elementary School on March 2 to meet
with the staff, emotions were running high.

The teachers had heard that Witt was questioning the need for mental
health support for students, and they were worried.

During the meeting, Witt would not commit to keeping the same number of
guidance counselors and social workers for the next school year. He said
that his focus was on �academic success,� according to the recordings
obtained by NBC News.

Staff members tried to explain why it was critical to address students�
emotional issues so that they could learn. One employee mentioned recent
familial homicides in the community as an example of the kind of trauma
children are facing, including a murder-suicide that left a student dead.

Witt asked if the school had a social worker. The employee replied
affirmatively, and then Witt asked, �Did the murder-suicide still occur?�
Several people in the room gasped.

That same week, Laura Magnuson, the district�s mental health supervisor,
had a call with Witt to press him on reapplying for grants for mental
health professionals. She had emailed him to warn that due dates were
coming up, and a couple had already passed. If the district did not
reapply, it would lose $1.2 million in annual funds that covered the
salaries of 15 positions, such as counselors, social workers and career
and college readiness specialists.

The following week, after she couldn�t convince Witt to reapply for the
grants, she sent him her resignation.

�I feel most worried that this new vision will leave our most vulnerable
students and families behind,� Magnuson, who declined an interview
request, wrote in an email to Witt.

Magnuson�s email circulated online after Matt Gawlowski, a father who
chronicles the administration�s actions on a blog, got a copy through an
open records request, and it disturbed some families enough to pull their
children from the district.

Craig Johnson, a father who describes himself as a �pro-life, gun loving
native of Woodland Park,� transferred three of his children to a
neighboring district in Manitou Springs. That district said 47 students
from Woodland Park are transferring in the fall.

Johnson said he was particularly bothered that the district�s leaders
thought mental health was best left for parents to address at home.

�There are lots of kids for whom home is a problem place, unfortunately,�
Johnson said. �So don�t tell me mental health starts at home when we have
examples of parents murdering at home.�

Zehan Rogers, a Woodland Park sophomore, said he�s had a friend die by
suicide and others who have had depression. He said he doesn�t think the
board understands how important having mental health staff available is
for the 2,000 students in the district.

�It can save their lives,� he said. �There�s so many unforeseen
consequences that will come from this.�

'A very important step'
At the Woodland Park school board�s most recent meeting on April 12, only
a handful of the 50 people packed into a conference room under fluorescent
lights voiced support for the board.

One was a man who�d brought a red leather-bound Bible with him. He gave a
short speech during the public comment session in which he called teachers
�insurrectionists� and implored the board to stand up to them to �stop the
next Reichstag that is bound to happen in the Woodland Park school
district� � referring to an arson attack on the German parliamentary
building in 1933 that Nazis blamed on Communists.

But the hot topic that evening was students� mental health. The board had
proposed a resolution declaring opposition to a bill in the Colorado
Legislature to offer voluntary annual mental health screenings of students
in sixth grade and above.

Amber Hemingson, a sixth-grade teacher and mother, described how
supportive colleagues and previous administrators were when her husband
died of cancer in 2020, and her family struggled with depression in the
aftermath.

Standing at a podium a few feet away from the board members, Hemingson
said the district had provided vital counseling services so she could
continue working and her children could function in class. She recalled
how Lee, the teacher who recently left the district, once found
Hemingson�s suicidal daughter crying in the bathroom and comforted her.

�Selfless WPSD employees cared for orphans and a widow in their distress,�
she said, trying not to cry. �Will you look after orphans and widows in
their distress, or will Christ say to you, as he said in Matthew 25:45,
whatever you did not do for the least of thee, you did not do for me.�

Fifteen minutes later, the board read the resolution, which vowed that the
district would opt out of the mental health screenings if the bill passed.
Rusterholtz said he was proud to support the resolution because parents
should be in charge of their children�s education and mental health.

�This is a very important step,� Rusterholtz said. �This is one more
standing in the way of big government taking charge of your children.�

The board passed the resolution unanimously. The man who�d earlier called
teachers �insurrectionists� stood and applauded.

<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/woodland-park-colorado-school-board-
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