XPost: alt.education, alt.politics.trump, sac.politics   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: no.more.queer.crap.in.schools@gmail.com   
      
   On 25 Aug 2021, TrumpenFuehrer  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   
      
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