Ken Witt, superintendent of Woodland Park School District, made jaw-dropping comments about a lawsuit filed by the Colorado Education Association (CEA) related to the Woodland Park district’s abridgement of employees’ First Amendment rights. His cynicism must leave Woodland Park’s residents incredulous.

Witt stated CEA’s lawsuit “feels like a coordinated political attack by various actors and progressive groups such as the ACLU, civil rights attorneys, and the teachers’ union, all of whom are attempting to intimidate and to wear out the district simply due to its recent pivot to parent- and student-friendly policies and practices.” If the policies are so parent- and student- friendly, why have so many parents and students attending Woodland Park schools objected?

As background, Witt first came to notice when he was elected to the Jeffco school board during a tumultuous time in Jeffco’s administration related to Common Core standards and student data privacy policies. His leadership of a right-wing board and its attempts to take curriculum back to the 1950s caused a student revolution that led to a recall petition that led to his defeat in a recall election.

Stay up to speed: Sign-up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

Ever a committed anti-union, anti-public school teacher ideologue, Witt cooked up public school go-arounds after his Jeffco rout, using a BOCES work-around in Colorado Springs. BOCES, or Boards of Cooperative Education Services, typically supply services and purchasing cooperation among small school districts to gain cost efficiencies by joining together. This is the mission of Colorado’s coalition of BOCES with Dale McCall as executive director.

Witt’s BOCES is different. His clever manipulation has used a loophole in Colorado law to pull two school districts in Colorado Springs together to form their own unique BOCES. They use this enterprise to supply online, hybrid and brick-and-mortar education outside traditional public and charter schools while using public money.

According to Witt’s Education re-Envisioned BOCES website, this enterprise supports at least three physical schools, six online schools, and a home-school enrichment program. Witt is executive director of the schools. With his Woodland Park superintendent’s salary and executive director’s income, the declared capitalist double dips into taxpayer money for his income. There’s an outstanding lawsuit challenging Witt’s BOCES shenanigans.

When Witt was hired as Woodland Park superintendent, he brought with him his BOCES-sponsored Merit Academy that was turned down as a charter by a previous Woodland Park school board. He co-located Merit, now a charter school approved by the current board, in a Woodland Park school building. Merit is distinctive in its unusual demographic for Colorado schools. It comprises a student population that is 90% white. That is, it has a 0.1 diversity rating while the state average is .61.

This fact has not prompted the Colorado Department of Education to cite the school for its enrollment processes. Tucking Merit Academy in Woodland Park, many miles away from more diverse communities, secures its dominant white student population while the charter receives public school funding from the state and the Woodland Park school district.

Merit Academy offers Witt’s version of a 1950s-1960s core knowledge curriculum. Its elementary and high school reading lists comprise the “classics” of the baby boomer generation’s English classes, which means there is not one author or poet of color among its selected texts. Students will find out about racism through “Huckleberry Finn” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” No Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Tony Morrison, or, God forbid, the gay Black author James Baldwin. In the public school division of the district, the school board banned contemporary Black author Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me.” It looks like those students won’t get comprehensive American literature or history lessons either

Recently, Witt and his Woodland Park school board also banned a former employee, Logan Ruths, from school properties. Another local citizen, in his comments to the board, stated three candidates running against current board members would introduce “radical ideas to vulnerable school children” causing “gender confusion taught through SEL (social-emotional learning).” Ruths offered this snide remark to the speaker in response: “Where else do you do comedy? I’d like to come see one of your shows.” The board president took offense and decided to call the police. Ruths was tossed and told not to come back for a year. The ban was subsequently rescinded, but the ACLU suit continues.

That ostracism was one straw too many for the CEA. It will take the district and Ken Witt to court over its First Amendment gags on district employees. It’s about time as this speech curtailment has occurred since the previous school year. Current policy states school employees may not communicate with media or anyone else in a public setting or on social media about district decisions without permission. Support Woodland Park Schools would be one of the places where school employees cannot post information.

That site documents Witt’s impact on schools. Gateway Elementary, the school with the highest percent of minority students in the district at 18%, has seen two-thirds of its teachers depart and more than half of its administrators. One former teacher, a Woodland Park resident and graduate of the town’s schools, described the current board’s tyrannical behavior and Witt’s “deceit and dishonesty” in a resignation letter.

This letter is a warning to the rest of us. Witt is using the Woodland Park school board as a tool to take over the district and impose his anti-democratic, anti-public school ideology. He’s exploiting the BOCES concept to use public money to serve his conservative agenda and line his own pocketbook. His schools are not high performing or meritorious. They are not inclusive of all American children. They are an example of the failure of our state’s school accountability system to ensure accountability for public funds and democratic values. Let the lawsuits proceed and succeed.

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