Pikes Peak ERBOCES Exit Puts Co-op on the Clock

The Sentinel, publishing reporting from Chalkbeat, says Pikes Peak State College will withdraw from Education reEnvisioned Board of Cooperative Educational Services, better known as ERBOCES, effective Aug. 15. That matters because state law requires co-ops like ERBOCES to have at least two members, either two school districts or a school district and a college. Once Pikes Peak walks, ERBOCES needs another member to keep operating legally.

This is not just a membership shuffle. ERBOCES has already been under fire over Riverstone Academy, described in the story as a “public Christian school” in Pueblo County, and over the rapid growth of publicly funded home-school enrichment programs operated through private contractors and subcontractors. Elizabeth School District already left in early June. District 49 considered leaving, then stayed. Now Pikes Peak State College is out, and the whole thing looks less like a stable education partnership and more like duct tape, politics, and school-choice warfare wearing a blazer.

Ken Witt, ERBOCES’ executive director, offered the classic official-disaster lavender spray: members come and go because of “political and administrative changes,” and ERBOCES will keep working so parents have access to programs and schools they want. Translation: one leg of the table just walked away, another already left, the last school district is visibly nervous, and everyone is being asked to admire the table.

The Bullet Point Brief

• Pikes Peak State College is leaving ERBOCES on Aug. 15, which threatens the co-op’s ability to keep operating under state law unless it finds another member.
• Elizabeth School District already withdrew in early June, and District 49 in El Paso County considered bailing too before deciding to remain. That is not exactly a confidence parade.
• ERBOCES has been controversial because it authorized Riverstone Academy and helped fuel big growth in publicly funded home-school enrichment programs using private contractors and subcontractors.
• Colorado lawmakers responded in May by sharply limiting the power of co-ops like ERBOCES to operate schools or programs outside their member districts. When the Legislature brings out the pruning shears, somebody usually grew the vine through the neighbor’s window.
• District 49 board president Marie LaVere-Wright warned that if District 49 left, ERBOCES would have a structural problem and families depending on its programs could immediately lose something. There it is: adults build the maze, kids and parents get trapped inside it.

My Bottom Line

Parents want options. That is not complicated. Some families want online schools. Some want home-school enrichment. Some want programs the traditional system does not provide. In a healthy education system, that demand would be treated as a signal. In Colorado, it becomes an acronym, a board fight, a legal controversy, a legislative crackdown, and a governance fog bank thick enough to hide a dump truck.

That is the real scandal here. Not that families are looking for alternatives. Good for them. The scandal is that the adults in charge keep building complicated education machinery and then act stunned when normal people ask who is accountable when the thing starts smoking. ERBOCES may survive this. The story does not say it is dead. But it is clearly destabilized, and the credibility problem is no longer theoretical when members start heading for the exits.

And spare us the bureaucratic perfume. “Political and administrative changes” is the kind of phrase people use when they do not want to say, “This got messy.” Pikes Peak State College did not issue a novel. It said it is withdrawing and had nothing more to add. Elizabeth already left. District 49 had to debate whether staying attached would hurt its reputation. That is not housekeeping. That is smoke coming from the electrical panel.

The worst part is who pays when Colorado education governance turns into a knife fight in a conference room with bad coffee. Not the consultants. Not the architects of the maze. Not the calm little quote machines issuing soothing statements from the blast zone. Parents pay. Kids pay. Families who just wanted access to a program that worked for them get dragged into another institutional turf war where accountability goes to die under fluorescent lights.

Source: The Sentinel