Critics complain that his efforts to protect public education are political stunts that transform normally quiet local elections into hyperpartisan battles funded by outside groups and money.
In Woodland Park, Carol Greenstreet, a former school board president, said the district already reflected the town’s largely conservative and Christian values long before Wommack began his campaign.
Wommack and his followers have “created a war that didn’t have a reason to be fought,” said Greenstreet, whose husband, Kirk, is senior pastor of the evangelical Woodland Park Community Church.
But once elected, Woodland Park’s new conservative majority worked quickly — sometimes meeting in private, she alleged, in violation of state law — to turn the district upside down.
The district became the first and, so far, only locality in the U.S. to adopt the controversial American Birthright social studies curriculum, which has been rejected by Colorado’s State Board of Education. Since it was adopted, some students have been required to perform make-up work to qualify for college admission.
(The Civics Alliance, the group behind American Birthright, did not respond to a request for comment.)
The district let go of its mental health workers, social workers and therapists. “We are not the Department of Health and Human Services,” said new district Superintendent Ken Witt, who led a conservative takeover of the Castle Rock school district before being recalled in 2015.
The school board also put a gag order on faculty and staff who disagreed with the changes, firing some who aired their concerns anyway. Recently, more than 80 teachers and staff signed a letter condemning the new “culture of fear and silence” and calling for solutions that “prioritize our children’s futures over politics.”
Around 40% of the district’s workforce did not return for the 2023-2024 school year, and many families in the district have become “refugees” who transferred their children to different schools miles away.
The district now budgets more than $200,000 a year for legal fees, more than 10 times its legal budget five years ago.
Despite the controversy, Wommack has given the new board his full support. Charis bused nearly 100 students to a May meeting where a vote was being held to elect a new superintendent, displacing hundreds of parents and teachers who were barred by capacity regulations. Some citizens now gather as much as five hours early at board meetings to make sure they can speak and vote.
Students from Charis, which operates a Practical Government school, also often sign up for many of the limited public speaking slots, using their allotted time to criticize “violent, extreme radicals, communists and socialists taking over our schools.”
