December 22, 2022 11:29 AM UTC

Wait What, Ken Witt?

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Springs Gazette’s Nick Sullivan reports, while the rest of the state was still digesting the results of last month’s landslide victories for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, a once-discredited Republican school board president, recalled from office seven years ago in Jefferson County, was making the unlikeliest of comeback plays an hour south in conservative Woodland Park:

The Woodland Park School District RE-2 board of education unanimously voted to select an interim superintendent Wednesday, speaking over jeers and pushback from dozens of attendees who came to the board meeting to voice displeasure over the decision.

If he accepts the offer, Kenneth Witt will serve in the position for six months. The board has plans to conduct a search for a permanent superintendent to be hired after that.

“Just looking at your guys’ faces and stuff, I can see it. I can sense the tension in the room,” [Pols emphasis] board member Cassie Kimbrell said. “But I also have spoken with Ken Witt, and I was there in the interview, and I talked with him [about] his experience and what I believe that he can bring to this community.”

In 2014, as we covered in this space in great detail being the biggest local political event that off year, a conservative majority on the Jefferson County Board of Education elected two years before proposed highly controversial revisions to history curriculum to “not encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.” The Jeffco school board’s focus on conservative political grandstands and hostility to LGBT student organizations, teachers, and parents provoked a recall campaign the following year that swept board president Ken Witt and his ideological co-conspirators Julie Williams and John Newkirk from office by over 60% of the vote in each case.

After Witt was thrown out of office by a lopsided margin in 2015 we didn’t hear much from him, nothwithstanding Witt stumping for Donald Trump in 2016–which we can say confidently did not help Trump win votes in Colorado. But far from being forgotten, Witt’s appointment as the interim superintendent of Woodland Park schools has provoked another grassroots revolt, obviously smaller-scale but resembling the backlash Witt created in Jeffco:

The board announced its intention to hire Witt at a Dec. 7 special meeting, in which Witt was named the sole finalist for the position. Students at Woodland Park High School were quick to respond.

Groups of students staged two protests outside their school, on Dec. 14 and 19, primarily voicing concern over Witt’s lack of experience as an educator and controversial attempt at changing history curriculum in Jefferson County, which ultimately led to his recall.

“They said the community’s so divided right now, but in reality the community is brought together against these guys,” [Pols emphasis] WPHS senior Chase Stel said. “It’s literally only those four (school board members) against the rest of the community.”

As one of Colorado Springs’ most affluent mountain exburbs, Woodland Park is undeniably more conservative than Jefferson County. But in Jeffco, the recall in 2015 marked a turning point, after which Republican political fortunes in this bellwether suburban county entered a terminal decline that continues to this day–leading to the outright dominance Jeffco Democrats enjoyed in the 2022 elections. As a proxy battlefield for national political issues, school board politics become deeply personal and leave lasting impressions with voters.

Hiring Ken Witt with the baggage he brings is nothing less than a provocation.

If the parents, students, and teachers of Woodland Park respond like Jeffco did, it could be a very bad bet.