Greeley Evans School District School Board Member Pepper Mueller to Resign Sept. 30

The night Greeley-Evans School District officially announced the resignation of board members, the school district received voices Monday from several citizens expressing frustration over a range of issues, including the board’s handling of a moving meeting earlier this month. I heard

Board member elected in 2019, Pepper Mueller, confirmed his resignation in August after raising issues with other board members earlier in the summer. Mueller’s husband Brad, a former City of Greeley employee accepted a job in the city of Boulder in May, and the family will move to Boulder in the near future.

The Board will declare Mueller’s seat open at its next Board meeting on October 10. The applicant for a seat will meet with the Board two weeks later on his October 24th for an orientation-type session to learn more about volunteer positions.

The board will interview November 1-2, depending on the number of applicants, and announce new board members on November 14, District 6 Superintendent Deirdre Pilch said at a meeting Monday. rice field.

All these meetings are public.

The Board held a closed executive session before its regular business meeting on Monday to receive legal advice on public comment procedures after the September 12 meeting. The Board will hold another closed executive session on October 10 to seek legal guidance and advice on the appointment of Mueller’s successor.

Monday afternoon’s board executive session on public comment was noted by at least one district resident who spoke out against the decision and during the revised public comment. He said it was perfectly appropriate under the school law to attend a board meeting to receive appropriate advice.

As of Monday, comments from the public on meeting agenda items will be heard early in the meeting. Public comment on non-agenda items will be moved to a later stage of the meeting. The time allotted for each person to speak at the Board has been reduced from three minutes to two minutes for him.

In late February, the Board extended citizens’ speaking time to three minutes, and this change went into effect in late March.

The Board responded to comments from two district residents at its Sept. 12 meeting to signal a move for public participation.

The women addressed the board that evening about a book in the District 6 library that they believed contained material inappropriate for students. One of the women read a graphic sentence from a book, and another of hers held up a picture of another book on the chalkboard.

District officials objected to the woman’s decision to address the board that way, and district residents who read the book said they didn’t want to read the text, but the content was of minors.

The school board’s decision to hold a caucus meeting on Monday wasn’t the only issue the school district was held accountable for.

On Monday, the board heard from several other district residents on various issues. While some of the residents’ comments were supportive of the district, many criticized it.

Support for District Residents Sonia Miller and Jamie Weber (who addressed the Board on the book on September 12) and the two gentlemen who asked Miller and Weber to apologize.

Concerns about teaching critical race theory, social-emotional learning, and sexual grooming of children by Kane Young, founder of Task Force Freedom. Speaking to the Thompson School District Board of Education earlier this month, Young said the district found more than a dozen pornographic books.

“We are not interested in banning or burning books,” said Young. “There’s not one. A simple solution is to protect these books and quarantine these books in a place where not all students can access them. And then we can get parental approval.”

Questions were also asked about new school district technology that could track students on the bus. This allows the school district to know which students are on which bus at any given time. Tracking technology allows school districts to have this information about daily routes, excursions and athletic events.

In a presentation to the school board during a work session on Sept. 12, Kent Henson, assistant superintendent of support services, said the decision to implement the technology came after District 6’s buses began rolling out in July 2018. He said it was the result of being involved in an accident.

Henson told the board that a paper listing the students on the bus was in a cornfield after the crash, causing a lot of confusion. Henson said the district spent some time looking for software to work with Infinite Campus, software that gives parents real-time access to school and district information.

The new software for student transportation is called Traversa, and the system can see changes in driver numbers and change routes, so school districts can even plan district-wide routes.