Investigation Results in Superintendent’s Dismissal, Teacher Evaluations Complete, School Board Continues with Policy Updates, Board Position Opening
by Laura Vass
Custer County School District C-1 Regular School Board Meeting on May 13th, began at 4:30 p.m.
All School Board members were present except Brad Davis who is moving out of the county and turned in his resignation. After a few changes to the agenda, to include removal of the Executive Session, the public was given their opportunity to speak.
Lea Grundy encouraged people to stay for a full meeting as she has been doing, noting that she has found that Facebook is not the best place to get information. She said she had requested the criminal background records so she could understand the issue with the administration. As such, she thanked the Board for doing their due diligence in this matter.
A student and parent expressed disappointment that the football Coach resigned.
School Counselor Troy Bomgardner expressed concern about the turnover in recent years and asked that the Board give some grace to the Superintendent and Principal (who were on paid leave pending investigation) and questioned if the Board broke policy in not doing reviews of the Superintendent in September and December. (Superintendent Peck was given his review in January, in agreement with his contract.)
Teacher, Lauri Yarger, expressed some frustration about short
notice (30 days) between First and Second readings of the
policies. She said she printed everything from First readings
and Second readings and compared them in order to see any changes. (The Board and committee were not aware that changes were not visible in the website upload process. CASB model policies have no changes.) Ms. Yarger’s policy concerns were put on the agenda for next month.
Board Secretary and Policy committee member Jennifer Kriegh explained the policy update process: First reads downloaded from CASB contain no changes for the first read. 2) The Policy committee updates formatting and makes suggestions. If the policy pertains to a department it is shared with the department. Any time someone communicates suggestions to the Board, those policies are given discussion time either at the committee meetings or at the Board meetings. First readings are up for a month.
Second readings are also posted for a month and these are redlined if there is a change, with wording in green if there are attached suggestions. If a policy pertains to a department it is shared with the department. Yarger said, “It feels like you are skipping community and teacher input.” The policies are posted on the district website for community access.
(Note: The policies have been worked on for the entire school year through a committee that includes the Superintendent, a school Board member, someone from the community, a teacher, etc. and the process works pretty well. If something doesn’t seem right, contact the Board. This would have easily cleared up questions and alerted the Board and committee of a problem. It turns out that some document transfers from one program to another, ie. Google docs to Word instead of PDF, on some computers/printers, do not retain the redlining. The committee will explore ways to remedy this issue.)
Some of the policies being updated were noted as approved in minutes of the last few years but they were not formatted or uploaded and there is no record of what was adopted for those policies. So they must be redone.
Under CORRESPONDENCE TO THE BOARD, a letter was read from a parent thanking the Board for their “swift and fair action” and commending them for their “actions with administration.”
“You did not assume “guilty until proven innocent” (which has been the ongoing theme of some outspoken community members and local reporters in their unhealthy attitude and unsubstantiated
accusations toward the Board). This is a serious situation which definitely warrants investigation. The decision to put administration on paid leave during the course of the investigation is fair and appropriate since the safety of students should always come first and until an investigation is completed, we do not know whether or not the current administration has been negligent in their duties to protect our students and follow state laws. Only a complete and thorough investigation can give us these answers and alleviate these concerns. I have said before and will say again, my fondness for any administrator does not supersede my need for that administrator to adequately perform the duties of their office, especially with regard to student safety.”
Under BOARD OF EDUCATION AND SUPERINTENDENT ACCOUNTABILITY, acting Superintendent and Principal, Walt and Lori Cooper gave a presentation on how the process works for background checks: Licensed and non-licensed staff are different. The first is done and updated via CDE. Those background checks are consistently monitored. For non-licensed staff, the administrator does the background checks through the CBI portal and must also monitor and request updates.
The status of teacher evaluations was noted. Peck previously told the Board that evals were current. Elementary teacher evals were completed by the elementary principal. For middle school and high school, no evals had been entered this school year, so Mrs. Cooper had to force close the eval processes in the system (creating a start over) in order to conduct end of year evals. Lori said she had conducted 14 planned and 10 spontaneous evals for the secondary teachers. (What a feat! Evals are now complete.)
The current list of hires was properly updated. The Board was misinformed by Peck that licensing was correct. The acting Superintendent completed the correct licensure process for two high school teachers, a third was not eligible for licensing.
CONSENT AGENDA ITEM changes included: accepting the resignation of Brian Bills, Health PE teacher, and Mrs. Longfallow’s move from 5th Grade to Art teacher.
The Board approved meeting minutes for April 8, 16 and 29, accepted resignations from Mari Raley, Fourth Grade, Brian Bills- Health PE, Clayton Stallones Jr., HS head football coach, and Candice Stipanovic – SPED Paraprofessional. New hire approvals included: Deborah Matcham, Stephanie Gasseling, Jodi Price as Elementary teachers, Kristi Giste-Barnes -Title 1, Bethany Hogg Elementary (Alt Licensure) and Alan Paxton – MS head baseball coach.
Other items approved under Consent Agenda included, MOU with Pueblo Community College Gateway Program, Approval of Non-Probationary Certified Employee Renewal: Carrie Smith, and Approval of Administrative Renewals: Sydney Benesch, Principal.
Consent Item H approved 20 First readings of Policies. (Note: these are taken from CASB and are not altered) Second readings were approved as amended. (The amendment removed several policies from the list so they could be further evaluated. (Policies dropped were 4)BEDH – Public Participation at School Board Meetings, moved to the next meeting as a Discussion Item, 5) BG – School Board Policy Process, and 6) BG-R – Policy Adoption.
Under STAFF REPORTS, COMTSS has a new statement change on Logical Discipline which takes effect in 2026.
Transportation head Traci Terry reviewed the recommendations from the State on Bus replacements. The district continues to maintain current buses.
Stacy Terrill; For CCKC, a Family Fun Day is planned for
June 14th, and she noted Silver Cliff also has a fun day in the works. (June 21)
Mr. Cooper said BOCES has four well-qualified candidates for director. BOCES will choose a candidate at the meeting on
May 14th.
For Legislative, Jennifer Kriegh noted the 4-year average funding process for school budgets, and a coming requirement on cell phone use and policy but didn’t have final details.
The FINANCIAL REPORTS were given by Charlotte Lindaman. The Budget hearings have been done (twice) and on June 24th a resolution will be up for adoption. The budget draft is posted for all to review.
Under DISCUSSION ITEMS & PRESENTATIONS, Acting
Superintendent Walt Cooper gave an update on Y25-26 staffing. He explained the Adjunct Licensure process. There is a statewide shortage of teachers applying for jobs and it’s not just rural districts. Custer County Schools has no applicants for Math teacher, High School counselor, or the Tech Position, which is now listed as Industrial Arts to broaden the applicant pool. Advertising will be increased.
Cooper said (twice) that for the Budget they need to restructure with a placeholder for another position because combining athletic director with middle school principal or high school principal is not viable. (Note: Until this year, we had one principle and an athletic director. Now there are two principal positions, Grade school and MS/HS.)
The District lost its Appeal on the FAMLI leave case (Dept. of Labor). This issue dates back to June 2022 when the District opted out (which is allowable) but the then administration failed to register their opt out and were automatically opted in. Now back premiums are owed. Cooper said he’ll engage with staff and explore relief for fees, fines, and penalties. (Reggie thanked Charlotte who represented the District well in both hearings.)
Under ACTION ITEM “Consider
Actions In Response To Investigations of District Policy Violations”, the Board read an opening four-point statement:
● At our meeting on April 16, the Board placed two employees on paid administrative leave pending an investigation after learning of potential violations of law and policy in connection with the District’s hiring processes.
● At our direction, Acting Superintendent Cooper retained Shelly Landgraf with Pure HR Solutions to conduct an independent investigation.
● The Board received the investigation and findings from Ms. Landgraf yesterday.
● As the governing body of the District, the Board is responsible for reviewing the investigation findings and determining whether there has been a violation of law and/or policy, and, if so, taking the appropriate personnel action.
The Board then presented the action for approval and after a second, they went into discussion.
For Investigation of District Policy Violations concerning HS Principal McCormick, the Board refers the decision over to the acting superintendent.
Next was Investigation of District Policy Violations by Superintendent Thom Peck.
In discussion, Director Cameron Fiore read his comments to the public. He explained the issue and his opinion succinctly. Below is an excerpt:
“The Superintendent and Principal knowingly hired personnel, that according to the State of Colorado and Board policy, are disqualified from ever working in a Colorado School. These disqualifications are outlined in CRS 22-32-109.8 (6.5) and District Policies GCE GCF-R, GDE_GDF-R.
These statutes and policies include but are not limited to: any crime of violence, felony child abuse, unlawful sexual behavior, an act of domestic violence, a felony drug offense, and others. State law also specifically calls out any offense in any other state, which if committed in Colorado would meet these definitions and would be disqualifying.
Let me be clear…the law says If any of these items are in an employee’s or applicant’s record, they are disqualified from working in our school period. And… with full knowledge that there were disqualifying records in the background checks, the Superintendent chose to disregard both Colorado law and District Policy and hired them anyway, without any due regard to the potential consequences that their decision would bring.”
“And while there are those in the community who seem to have an opinion about everything the Board is doing, these people do not and cannot possess all of the facts necessary to even have an opinion. But that doesn’t seem to stop them from just making stuff up.”
“From the very first Board meeting, Thom has established a consistent pattern of lying to and trying to manipulate the Board. Teachers have come forth stating similar concerns. All of this is documented in public record. Including the recent investigation, where he was caught lying to the investigator. So, when we say that Thom has a record of lying to the Board, that is a factual and documented record.
(If you would like to read Cameron’s full statement, see this article on our website at www.sdcsentinel.com. HERE)
(During the discussion, School Board President Foster gave a statement, following Mr. Fiore. This is also available HERE.) Below is an excerpt:
“I didn’t follow through on my conscience two months ago. Doing so prioritized the easy things Thom does, like being nice, telling people only what they want to hear and quoting book characters at the end of the day. This allowed his weakness in decision making to move beyond frequently choosing to ignore district policies to disregarding and violating state statute. We are all very lucky to simply be arguing about a man and overpaying his performance.
There is nothing fun about holding people accountable. It’s what our service as Board directors requires us to do.
Risk and potential consequences matter. Thom’s decision to hire and then lie to the Board in both open meeting and email about background checks put the entire school at potential risk. Demanding accountability is our job. And most especially in a situation like this.”
The Board voted to end Thom’s contract.
Next up was Resolution 25-10 – Accepting Resignation of Board of Education Member Brad Davis and Declaring a Board Vacancy.
Foster read Brad’s short letter in which he said he would be relocating soon to another county, necessitating his resignation. The Board accepted his resignation and set the process and dates in motion for finding a replacement to finish out the term Joseph McCarthy was elected for. McCarthy resigned during his first year. The position ends November 2025.
(For information on being considered for the position, please see this post HERE.)
Other Action Items considered and approved were; Employee Benefits Program and Broker of Record (Colorado Educators Coalition) for 2025-2026,
District Property and Casualty Insurance Renewal with Glatfelter Under-writing Services, Inc., and Receipt of Proposed Budget for FY 2026.
Adoption of Policies (Second Reading) was next. Because a few policies have been clawed back for further review, the reader should go to the district’s website for a list of adopted policies.
Of note, was the removal of the Policy “CBD – Superintendent’s Contract” which does not need to be in policies.
Amended policies that passed included; EBBA-R – Prevention of Disease/Infection Transmission changes on Second reading: Taking universal precautions statement added. EEAFB-R – Use of School Vehicles by Community Groups Passed with Change
recommendations from the Transport Director added. 26) EEAEA – School Transportation Vehicle Operator Requirements and Training (Language change to “all drivers” instead of “school transport operators.” BID/BIE-School Board Member Compensation, expenses, Insurance and Liability. (Note: The “rumor” and “reporting” that the school Board is seeking monetary compensation for their role, was and is untrue.)
GBGH-1-R – Emergency Leave Bank Operation was placed back on the First read list because it had never been approved for First read after FAC request to make changes.
EHB – Records Retention passed. This is a placeholder or approval “to have a policy”. The committee will look at this in the fall because it doesn’t exist in the policy manual. Policy will be based on the state archive system. By passing of the Second reading—the Board agrees the district will in the future adopt a policy.
The next Regular Board meeting is on June 3, 2025, at 4:30 p.m. in the School Library.