May I See Your ID Please

When a teacher, a bus driver, a secretary goes to work for a school district they must submit their fingerprints and have a background investigation completed. When my 80 year old mother decided to volunteer at her grandchild’s school she had to use $20 of her own Social Security money to get a set of fingerprints to submit to the school.

When someone decides to run for the school board they simply fill out an application and create a half-truthful webpage (my apologies to those who are truthful). Being a school board member requires no fingerprints, no background investigation. There could be a six-year stint in Super Max in a board candidate's past and they really wouldn’t have to divulge that to the school district, or the voters.

A person is ineligible to run for a school director position if he or she has been convicted of committing a sexual offense against a child.1 Colo. Rev. Stat. § 22-31-107(5)(a). The statutes do not place an affirmative duty on school officials to fingerprint or conduct background checks of school board candidates. Instead, candidates must affirm under oath that they meet the qualifications of the office if elected. Colo. Rev. Stat. § 1-4-501(1).

Hopefully, someone one would find out about criminals, but really how much do the voters honestly know about school board candidates. There is no official oversight of their qualifications and credential and no oversight of how they behave once they are elected. This is something I am going to complain loudly to my legislators about.

How much do we know about the three ultra-conservatives that just took over the Jeffco School Board and our children’s future?

A Word About LinkedIn

Mickey and Minnie Mouse have a profile on LinkedIn.  They are listed as leisure consultants who graduated from Walt Disney University.  This should serve as a word of caution about the LinkedIn profiles of Ken Witt and John Newkirk. In my opinion, they deserve some scrutiny.

Witt’s LinkedIn profile has changed several times since he crept into office. Immediately after the election, he created an interesting and somewhat misleading title for himself.

Witt is not an employee of the Jefferson County school district, but he loves this title:

In fact, I have been unable to find any verification that Witt is gainfully employed. His campaign website and his Facebook page say he is president of the Aabren Group. The Aabren Group is not listed with any Secretary of State’s office, there is no website for the company and no client list, noTaxID number. You can draw your own conclusions. Check out Witt, Newkirk and William's backgrounds for yourself and see if you think they are really qualified to be responsible for educating and providing for the well-being of 85,000 children and 14,000 employees.  Are they really two unemployed guys and a receptionist?

Learn more about Julie Williams and the  "I call them the Despicable" here. 
(Denver Post, 12/29/13) 

The Jefferson County Board of Education Policy BBBA simply states:

A candidate for the office of school director shall be a resident of the director district that will be represented, have been a registered elector and resident of the school district for at least 12 months. A person is ineligible to run for school director if he/she has been convicted of committing a sexual offense against a child.

It is important that the candidate be sincerely and honestly interested in serving the whole school district for the best interests of all children. Board members shall be nonpartisan in dealing with school matters. The Board does not wish to subordinate the education of children and youth to any partisan principle, group interest, or personal ambition.