{"id":2450084,"date":"2019-10-20T00:40:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-20T06:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/aspen-school-board-candidates-try-to-crack-the-communications-code\/"},"modified":"2019-10-20T00:40:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-20T06:40:00","slug":"aspen-school-board-candidates-try-to-crack-the-communications-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-school-board-candidates-try-to-crack-the-communications-code\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen school board candidates try to crack the communications code"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Board of Education candidates Jim Pomeroy, Katy Frisch, John Galambos, Jonathan Nickell, Bettina Slusar and Patsy Kurkulis enjoy a moment of levity during Wednesday\u2019s forum sponsored by Aspen Education Foundation.<\/strong>
Rick Carroll\/The Aspen Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

If the upcoming November elections seem buried in the shadow of next year\u2019s state and federal races, perhaps a drive down Cemetery Lane is in order.<\/p>\n

These days the neighborhood is bustling with yard signs touting candidates for the Aspen School District\u2019s Board of Education, a five-member committee with two open positions in play during the Nov. 5 elections.<\/p>\n

Most of the signs\u2019 attention are devoted to board hopefuls John Galambos and Jonathan Nickell.<\/p>\n

Combined, they account for one-third of the six candidates \u2014 the others are Katy Frisch, Patsy Kurkulis, Jim Pomeroy and Bettina Slusar \u2014 in a race highlighting the same concerns that routinely rise in local municipal and county elections: leadership, housing, budget constraints, staff pay and morale, infrastructure, planning and communications.<\/p>\n

The campaigns have focused on some of the district\u2019s most pressing matters, such as hiring a new superintendent, a decision that will ultimately rest with the next board.<\/p>\n

Over the course of three public forums held last week, the candidates reflected on events of the 2018-19 school year that prompted them, at least in part, to run for the Board of Education.<\/p>\n

An emerging theme: communications and transparency. Voters can expect to hear those two buzzwords repeatedly during most any election season. And it\u2019s been no different in the BOE race, but candidates also have shared their personal frustrations \u2014 not just what they\u2019re hearing through the parent rumor mill \u2014 over trying to get district information or being effective members of volunteer groups that serve as advisory boards to the BOE.<\/p>\n

At Wednesday\u2019s forum put on by Aspen Education Foundation, for instance, Frisch, responding to a question about the dormancy of the district\u2019s Financial Advisory Board, said her efforts to dig into the schools\u2019 finances were hamstrung by the prior administration \u2014 chiefly its CFO and superintendent. Frisch has been on the advisory board since 2009, but she conceded her role has been insignificant because of what essentially has become a nonexistent board.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last two years it has basically been ineffective and hasn\u2019t met,\u201d she said. \u201cI planned to speak positive tonight, but I have to say, the last administration, the CFO and superintendent, basically shut it down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fuentes was unresponsive to Frisch\u2019s emails, and Frisch said \u201cthere was no where to go\u201d when it came to getting information for the advisory board.<\/p>\n

Getting basic data has posed unreasonable challenges, some candidates alleged.<\/p>\n

For Nickell, \u201cthe only way I was able\u201d to get information,\u201d he said at Wednesday\u2019s AEF forum, was to file Freedom of Information Act requests with the district.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd even then, the last time I made data requests, they threw up their hands,\u201d Nickell said.<\/p>\n

On that occasion, Nickell, a former member of the District Accountability Commmittee, was seeking district data to verify similar information he\u2019d received from the Colorado Department of Education, he said.<\/p>\n

Communications and access to information, while having improved this year, \u201chasn\u2019t completely gone away,\u201d Slusar said at Wednesday\u2019s forum, noting for the past month she hasn\u2019t been able to get data from the district on the college graduation rate for graduates of Aspen High.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re all in agreement that this has been a problem that needs to change if we\u2019re going to have any movement at all,\u201d Slusar said. \u201cIt can\u2019t just be the box.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slusar and Galambos, on several instances last week, said the board should look beyond its official meetings to communicate with the public. Board meetings, due to their limitations, aren\u2019t the ideal forum for candid talk about touchy or controversial issues, they said.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s essentially how it went down during the fall months of 2018, when publicity surrounding the criminal background of the district\u2019s human resources director touched off a different kind of campaign \u2014 this one aimed at dismantling Superintendent John Maloy from his post.<\/p>\n

Formed was the Aspen Parent Action Committee, which used the HR director\u2019s background as a springboard to attack the superintendent on a bevy of other issues at the school district for which they held Maloy responsible.<\/p>\n

During the public remarks portion of several BOE meetings, parents, including Kurkulis and Slusar, lit into the board and said Maloy\u2019s management style permeated a culture of fear and distrust among teachers and staff, which trickled into the classrooms, where they said academic performance was not up to snuff. Examples cited included the high school\u2019s falling from third to 20th since 2010 in the Colorado Department of Education\u2019s ratings.<\/p>\n

With the parents committee on one side, Maloy\u2019s supporters also galvanized, saying the superintendent\u2019s shortcomings were exaggerated while his successes were played down.<\/p>\n

When all was said and done last school year, Maloy ended up cutting ties with the district, which also had to find a new CFO and HR director. The district has an opening for superintendent, while Tom Heald has agreed to take the helm for the 2019-20 year.<\/p>\n

The district named Molly Ownes its new HR director earlier this year, and Linda Warhoe is now the district\u2019s chief financial officer<\/a> after Fuentes resigned in March with no explanation given by the district.<\/p>\n

With three children who graduated from Aspen public schools, Galambos said they enjoyed academic experiences not afforded in other communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we are doing about 90 percent of things correctly,\u201d Galambos said. \u201cI think there\u2019s 10 percent things that need work and we can identify those and work together to solve those problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he also agreed that behind the scenes, something has been amiss.<\/p>\n

\u201cShould the board have an open quarterly house?\u201d Galambos asked. \u201cIs it the kind of thing that happens in a public hearing, in a public board meeting, or should we have an open house and say, \u2018Guys, this week we\u2019re going to talk about our finances,\u2019 and then bring in the people we need?\u201d<\/p>\n

During the AEF forum, held on the school campus, Pomeroy noted how the venue reflected the candidates\u2019 frustrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very ironic that we\u2019re in the Black Box Theater,\u201d Pomeroy said, \u201cwhen you think about where we are, and we look behind this curtain and we have no idea what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is a mill of rumors and no answers, said Pomeroy, who sits on the District Accountability Committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what happens when we don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we fill in the void of information.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of questions but there hasn\u2019t been transparency,\u201d Kurkulis said, \u201cso we don\u2019t have any answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Five of the board candidates said change needed to happen at the top of the School District this year, starting with Maloy. Galambos was the lone one out, but said his thinking has since shifted.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time I would have supported Maloy, at the time,\u201d Galambos said. \u201cIt\u2019s been really good for me to dive into this stuff. My experiences with him personally and as a superintendent, every experience was positive. I started seeing this rift between the board and Maloy awhile ago \u2026 but I wasn\u2019t paying attention the way I should have. And at the time, I would have supported him, back then. And I wrote an email to the board saying \u2018let\u2019s be careful here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Galambos added board members \u201cweren\u2019t listening to people talking and talking for years about this,\u201d so it should shoulder some of the blame for the community division over Maloy.<\/p>\n

Yet he also suggested the public comments at board meetings regarding Maloy were unnecessarily divisive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like how the process went down,\u201d he said. \u201cI did not like the tone in the board meetings. I think we need to really repair the tone in our community. I think there are a lot of people who decided to take sides and there was a lot of abuse back and forth for the side that you took, and I think there\u2019s a lot of healing that has to occur here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Galambos called for a \u201cculture of respect, and we need to change our communications. And what I really think we need to do is start listening. I don\u2019t think anybody was listening to anybody last year. I think everybody was hackles up, do it. I believe the change could have happened in a little different way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frisch agreed, and said \u201cthe process is now going to make it fairly challenging to hire a new superintendent, because any good candidate is going to read the newspapers, so we have an extra challenge in how we go about in finding the next person, which we will overcome, but it will take more salesmanship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pomeroy said, \u201cObviously (Maloy) had lost the trust of the community and the school community, the general community. But the bigger picture isn\u2019t him. The bigger picture was that he was a symptom \u2026 mostly with transparency. If he had been better at communicating, maybe, who knows? But with the current systems in place, he was an inevitable conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Aspen schools community, Slusar said, also needs to look at itself in the mirror sometimes, bruises and all.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything has to be good all the time,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can\u2019t have negative information. \u2026 And sometimes, realistically, it\u2019s just not positive.\u201d<\/p>\n

rcarroll@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Board of Education candidates Jim Pomeroy, Katy Frisch, John Galambos, Jonathan Nickell, Bettina Slusar and Patsy Kurkulis enjoy a moment of levity during Wednesday\u2019s forum sponsored by Aspen Education Foundation.Rick Carroll\/The Aspen Times If the upcoming November elections seem buried in the shadow of next year\u2019s state and federal races, perhaps a drive down Cemetery […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2450084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 12:45:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2450084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}