A lot of ink has been spilled about the unusual happenings in the Woodland Park School District over the last four years. The dramatic conservative takeover in 2021, the immediate Open Meetings Law violations, the controversial chartering of a new school, the even more controversial hiring and tenure of superintendent Ken Witt. The American Birthright curriculum. The nexus with the growing trend of Christian nationalism and the troubling ties to the charismatic Seven Mountains Mandate. Despite the desperate wishes of locals, the district has not seen many dull moments since the current crop of seniors were in eighth grade.
Having spilled most of that ink myself, I feel qualified to say that, at no point amidst all that drama, did anyone expect the town’s 2025 school board races to look like they currently look. Respectful. Quiet. Almost eerily so – as if after the proverbial earthquake and fire, the district now finds itself listening to the whisper.
There is still plenty of time for that to change in the next four weeks, for outside groups to shovel money into incendiary mailers, for candidate forums to exceed the bounds of decency, for any of the other kinds of disruptions and disturbances which have beset the district’s last two election cycles. For now, though, the calm prevails.
And that, for those who know anything about Woodland Park, is a story in itself.
The arrival of the calm was unexpected, with the town’s activists, organizers, and candidates spending their summer building and planning for yet another knockdown, drag-out campaign season. As July turned to August, though, and the end-of-month candidate filing deadline started creeping near, people started realizing something strange: none of the incumbents – the controversial, district-shaping, curriculum-changing, building-selling, holy-warring incumbents who have been at the center of the turmoil in recent years – had filed for reelection. Not a single one of them.
Suddenly, what was expected to be a final reckoning against a slate of incumbents who have thrust the district into local and national news, often in an unfavorable light, has transformed into a different kind of race.
“It has changed things considerably,” one of the candidates told me.
Since 2021, the once-quiet district which educates nearly 2,000 children in Teller County has been the center of local political life, outshining the city council and county commission in money raised, time spent, and attention given, and for good reason: the turmoil in the district has not just impacted the schools, it has had noticeable ripple effects through the broader community. In the years I have spent writing about the rolling battles for the future of the small mountain town, I have lost count of how many people have lamented to me the friends they have lost, the acquaintances who no longer make eye contact in the grocery store.
In the absence of a final showdown against the familiar faces of board incumbents, some candidates are turning their attention to repairing what they see as the damage done to the district and the community in the last four years of turmoil.
“I honestly believe we can help a community heal,” one of those candidates told me. Carol Greenstreet is not a blue-haired progressive, though you wouldn’t know it from how some of the town’s prolific anonymous Facebook trolls have portrayed her in the recent past. In fact, she’s a Republican, and a familiar face to many in the community not just as a former member of the school board, but as the wife of the pastor at Woodland Park Community Church.
Greenstreet’s vision for binding up the wounds of the district involves communication, and a lot of it. “I think open discussions will be key,” she told me. “We need to have at least monthly work sessions as happened prior to 2021 for discussion and prioritization of work. We need to begin stakeholder meetings again. I believe we quickly need to have meetings at each elementary school, Merit Academy, and the Junior/Senior High for the purpose of hearing from parents and teachers in those communities.”
Still, she acknowledged, it will be a tough row to hoe. “I expect rebuilding trust to take until the next election cycle.”
A newcomer seeking a seat on the board echoed Greenstreet’s sentiments about transparency and communication in soothing the district’s rumbling fault lines, writing in the Gazette earlier this week that she’s running in part “to strengthen our schools and help our divided community heal.”
Kassidi Gilgenast has been the volleyball coach at Woodland Park High School for the last ten years, a position she was abundantly qualified for after her own run as a Division I college player and her years as an executive with USA Volleyball. Her run for the school board is Gilgenast’s first foray into politics, and as much as she thinks her managerial experience equips her for the job, she believes there are other considerations as well.
“Competency alone isn’t enough,” Gilgenast wrote. “Character and a commitment to the work matters deeply in leadership. Through a culture and commitment to transparent, ethical conduct, we can model the leadership we wish to see in our students.”
As the mother of a 10th grader, an 8th grader, a 3rd grader, and a kindergartener, Laura Gordon is invested in the district. “My heart has always been to support our students and teachers,” Gordon said in a recent video, “and to hold our leaders accountable for the number one goal of our schools: quality education for all children in our community.”
In a tacit rebuke of the incumbent board, seemingly driven at every turn by an agenda far beyond the wellbeing of the district’s children, Gordon said she hoped to “put aside personal and political agendas,” and focus on the real work of the district. In something closer to an explicit rebuke of the way things have unfolded in recent years, she also encouraged her supporters to be respectful of her opponent.
“Our children are watching,” she said, “and they deserve to see us put them first.”
Despite the absence of any incumbents in the race, at least one candidate I spoke to believes the controversial board members have been successful in the role, and wants to see that particular brand of success continued.
“Look at our recent academic scores,” Norm Michaels told me, “They climbed from 59% to 73% in just four years. I will help them go much higher. I’m not running for drama or platform; I’m running to refocus our district on students, teachers, and local families. I believe we can restore trust, raise standards, and ensure every child in Woodland Park graduates equipped for whatever path they choose.”
While some of the district’s scores have gone up, its enrollment has plummeted during the years of turmoil, and it has seen some of the highest teacher turnover in the state. Last year, the district was one of the state’s top sources of new homeschooling families who chose to leave the system altogether.
On his campaign website, Michaels is clear about why he thinks things have – as he sees it – gotten better in the district. “Our schools have dramatically improved since 2021’s change to conservative leadership,” it proclaims.
Michaels, who feels that God called him to run for school board back in June, also believes the district should put more emphasis on vocational training, and wants to see shop classes brought back.
Another candidate who did not respond to my outreach also appears to be running in defense of the current board’s controversial tenure. Clayton Austin’s website talks about “maximizing our momentum” to “build” on recent achievements, saying that “WPSD is making vast improvements.”
Unlike most of the other candidates – many of whom are positioning themselves not for or against a specific agenda, but against the toxic tenor of the last four years – Austin appears to be taking a different, more openly combative tack. On his website, he lists priorities like “refuse the union: keep the teachers’ union and their agenda out of WPSD,” and “defending our daughters: keep boys out of girls [sic] sports and spaces.”
Rounding out the field is Bert West, a familiar face in town, but one whose candidacy locals have struggled to place. Despite his distinctive mustachioed and cowboy-hatted appearance and his experience as the past president of Kiwanis International, the locals who have dedicated their time and effort to the district’s struggles over the last four years do not recognize him. As an August letter-to-the-editor in the Gazette succinctly put it, “Where’s Bert West been?”
“As WPSD gears up for board elections, Bert West’s sudden candidacy raises eyebrows,” letter author Barry Harden wrote. “For four years, our community has been embroiled in a crisis over school policies, teacher retention, and board decisions that have driven away educators and divided families. Meetings have overflowed with concerned parents, yet one thing has been noticeably absent: Bert West’s trademark cowboy hat.”
West’s campaign site is scant on policy, and the Gazette article announcing his candidacy in August was light on details, with West touting the size of the budgets he has managed and what he calls his ability to lead. “I think I bring to the table my leadership style, staying calm and keeping emotions out of it,” he told the paper. “Stability is one of my strong points and not letting meetings escalate.
That last note might strike a chord with the battle-weary voters of Woodland Park, but West’s campaign efforts have been the least visible in the field, and it is unclear if that will change in the campaign’s final month.
While the sudden evaporation of a climactic showdown in Woodland Park feels jarring to some, there’s a chance Woodland Park, far from being alone, once again finds itself on the front edge of changing dynamics in education politics. Four years ago, the first wave of “parents’ rights” sentiment was AstroTurfed in school districts across the nation with involvement from groups like the America First Legal Institute and other organizations heavily staffed by alumni of the first Trump administration. They sowed concerns about things like “critical race theory” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” they descended on school libraries with watchlists and McCarthyite fervor, they harassed queer teachers in state after state – and, in doing so, they worsened the deepening teacher shortage and saw interest in the teaching profession driven to the lowest level in more than half a century.
Now, in a different political landscape than when the movement was first seeded into life by operatives and mega-donors, thousands of districts across the nation are gearing up for another round of school board races – and this time, the biggest open question is whether the tide has finally turned against the culture war madness.
For some of the candidates in Woodland Park, the priority is healing, moving forward, and educating the district’s children. Others, it seems, remain more interested in political posturing and culture wars. What remains to be seen is which approach the voters prefer.
Fevers either break, or they kill you. This November, not just in Woodland Park but around the nation, voters could decide which direction the fever ravaging American public education will go.
