Voters in Jefferson County recalled conservative school board president Ken Witt in 2015, two years after he was elected in 2013. That could have been the end of his career in education, but no. He moved from Jefferson County to Monument and now he’s the executive director of Education reEnvisioned BOCES and interim, part-time superintendent of Woodland Park School District.

Witt is attempting to do in Woodland Park what voters in Jefferson County stopped. He’s establishing the conservative “American Birthright” standards from the Civics Alliance as the foundation for social studies in the district even though the State Board of Education nixed those standards in its recent revision of what Colorado’s students are supposed to learn about our history, government and politics.

When some Woodland Park parents objected to Witt’s nose-thumbing at the State Board of Education, the Colorado Department of Education told the parents to take their beef up the chain of command in Woodland Park School District which, of course, left them up a creek without a paddle.

Witt’s professional background generally wouldn’t establish him as school superintendent material. He worked in the private sector running some companies and as a security executive for Newmont Mining. He doesn’t have a background in education and has not been a classroom teacher or principal. His two years on the Jeffco board brought lots of controversy and pushback from teachers and administration. He and his cohorts managed to shove the superintendent out the door and caused enough disruption students stormed out of schools over their treatment of the district’s educators.

Not one to learn anything from the past other than to double down, Witt has repeated his history. Parents and students in Woodland Park picketed in front of the middle school when the interim superintendent summarily decided sixth grade students would remain in grammar schools in 2024 rather than matriculate to the middle school as they’ve done for many years.

The reason for stuffing sixth graders into five-grade elementary schools is smelly like three-day fish. Merit Academy, a “contract” school, not a charter school, was allowed to take 50% of the space in the middle school this year. Merit Academy had applied to the previous Woodland Park Board to join the district as a charter, but it was turned down as unready. Witt used his reEnvisioned BOCES position to put Merit into Woodland Park’s middle school without the board’s authorization. Apparently BOCES has this capability.

The consequence of this move is that any charter applicant that doesn’t receive authorization from a school board can go to reEnvisioned BOCES to receive a contract that will allow it to take up residence in the targeted district. This move gives reEnvisioned BOCES and its five member board, as well as Witt and his four reEnvisioned staff, a great deal of unencumbered power.

The Colorado Association of Charter School Authorizers wrote in its review of Witt’s move, “the Education Reenvisioned BOCES (ER BOCES) has established a new pathway to open brick and mortar public schools located in school districts that are not part of the BOCES, including doing so over the objection of one district and without consulting another.”

A key element of this “contract school” model is that these schools “are not subject to the statutory and regulatory provisions that cover charter schools.” That’s evident in Merit Academy’s social studies program which, like Woodland Park’s district, is now based on the “American Birthright” foundation.

In addition to giving the State Board of Education the raspberry and summarily changing fifth to sixth grade matriculation to accommodate Merit Academy contract school, Witt put out the word to teachers and administrators to keep their pieholes shut over the changes. If a teacher is approached by the press on these matters, the teacher must refer the press to the interim superintendent or get fired. Which begs the question, do the “American Birthright” standards accommodate freedom of speech as well as the right to bear arms?

The right to bear arms is well supported at Merit Academy as one of its two after-school activities is Shooting Club.

Witt receives up to $170,000 for his job as executive director at ERBOCES. The current crew of conservative Woodland Park board members said they support “transparency,” but Witt’s salary as interim superintendent is not posted in the salary scale section of the district’s website. Put his two paystubs together and he surely makes well above the rate of the best paid Woodland Park teacher, which seems to be in the low $70,000s.

Given Witt’s public school re-envisioning with the public’s money, it appears that his BOCES can authorize schools at any time and put them anywhere with no recourse. Does his vision match the state’s vision? Is this the path toward quality education that Gov. Jared Polis and the state legislature support?

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform