Two years ago, four conservatives in a county a half-hour up the mountain pass from Colorado Springs, Colorado, contested the local school board race for the first time in 16 years.
The four won, then added a fifth for unified control of Woodland Park School District, home to six schools and a pre-school, 2,020 students, and approximately 15,000 voters. They began making good on their campaign promises of school choice, increased education in America’s founding documents, and revoking teachers union privileges.
That’s when the crazy school board meetings started in this county that voted for Donald Trump in 2020 by at least a 30-point margin. In them, women and children sob, and men yell at board members who include a 110-pound grandma named Sue Patterson. Historic levels of interest — and animosity — in school board races have risen across the state and nation.
“Woodland Park is a small town, so I do routinely run into friends and enemies everywhere I go, and I didn’t have enemies before I joined the school board,” said Dave Illingworth in a May interview with The Federalist after MSNBC and former Vice reporter Antonia Hylton visited the mountain town.
A local faction backing a slate of three candidates opposing conservative incumbents Cassie Kimbrell, Illingworth, and Mick Bates in the Nov. 7 election has secured boosts from teachers unions, massive hostile state and national media coverage, and five lawsuits against the small, rural district. On top of that, two weeks ago local
