And I never have a short day on Friday. I forgot to do this at the beginning of the show altogether. Now whooahoo, that's right, My bad, Sorry, I forgot about that. So joining me now, my friend Jimmy Singenberger is joining me to talk about a story that is one of those things where you're like, you just kind of get the ick.
A little bit about it.
But I'm gonna let Jimmy unfurl the sad tale of Kyle Walpole at jeff Co Schools.
What happened? Jimmy, Hey, Mandy, thanks for having me.
This is one of those things where you hear about discrimination based on politics.
We hear it happening in the school system.
Here and there, and then you wonder, is it actually happening in a way that you can demonstrate? And I think Kyle Walpole might be in that circumstance. He is a twenty year veteran even longer than that, educator in Jefferson County Schools and the Platte Canyon School District, and he applied last fall for a temporary position as a social studies teacher at Jefferson Virtual Academy, an online school for Jefferson.
County schools and it seemed on the up and up.
In mid November, he seemingly nailed his interview, had two performance tasks he's completed, and he got a call at about one thirty pm from the principal of the school, Renee Williams, on November fifteenth, saying, hey, give me a call.
I really loved your interview. I'd like to talk with you about it.
And then he ended up not getting a callback when he returned to her call an hour and.
Fifteen minutes later.
And it seems that that was because two emails were circulated showing that in twenty fourteen, when teachers walk out of Jeffco's schools in protests of what was then a conservative school board, he had sought the names of the teachers from his daughter's school using an Open Records Act request, and then several years later he published an obed that was critical of HOWDI was being implemented in Colorado schools, and those emails were circulated, and then after that boom,
he did not get the job, and eventually they canceled the position and claimed, oh, that's why you didn't get it, even though the position was canceled weeks after they told him we're pursuing other.
Can you know?
And this is the kind of stuff that I know there, And I'm trying to think of a way to not make this about me, but it's it fits here. There have been situations where I have no that I was invited to be on a board, for instance, and I'm not going to name any names because I still like the organizations and the work that they do, but I was invited to be on a board. There was this big email like, oh, we'd love to have you come
in and talk to us and everything. So I respond back, Oh, I love what you do, blah blah blah, And then I got one email back that didn't have the whole group, the whole board on it.
Right.
I got one email back saying, oh, I'm so sorry we sent that to you an error okay, And I thought, okay, that's weird, but okay, no big deal. Found out from the other another board man who had suggested me as a potential member of the board that three of the other board members threw an absolute conniption fit because of my political views, and therefore I was iced out. But what am I gonna do?
Right?
I still like the organization's work. You know, I'm not gonna let three people who are ales stop me from supporting somebody who's doing good work. But yeah, this stuff happens all the time. Now here's the problem for Kyle. Kyle, unfortunately, is a white, straight male. If he were gay, or he were black, or he were Hispanic, he would he
would be able to sue. I mean, when you think about the former superintendent of Douglas County suing about losing his job because he said he was discriminated against racially because he was advocating for black students, I mean, it was so absurd. But the reality is white males don't have any protection.
Yeah, this is this is the thing that they said is you're not part of a protected class. I mean, that was what was said in an email to the investigator. From the investigator to the school principal. Don't worry. Good news. He isn't word good news. He's not part of a protected class.
So you don't have to worry about this.
But what's really interesting, Mandy is that Kyle and a friend of his who's an attorney, emailed and had exchanges with the school district's general council Julie Tolison.
And it's fascinating.
Because when I reached out to Toulisen ask some questions for my column in the Denver Gazette Today entitled that one Jeffco School Conservatives need not apply, she responded in part suggesting that I go look at the email correspondence between Kyle Lopol's attorney friend William Eigels, and her, and that did not support her case at all, and it showed that either she was.
Playing coy or she didn't do her homework.
To actually look at the facts and the timeline of events, which I clearly lay out in my piece that yeah, there is an obvious that the very least appearance, if not pretty darn definitive, that politics were at play here and there's no place for that in our school system.
And jeff Co is being run like garbage.
They're being run like hot garbage.
The president of their school board believes that every parent is abusing their child and that every child needs to be told how to report their abuse, even if it's just neglick. Can you imagine let me just say this, Jimmy, you don't have kids yet, Okay, let me just tell you what would happen if you empower children to say that they're being neglected. Anytime you say no, you can't have dessert. The next day they go to school, my
mom would can give me food. I mean, children understand how to manipulate the system, even if they don't understand the repercussions of that manipulation, right, I mean, that's just the facts. Anybody who's ever been a child of divorced parents knows, you know how to manipulate the system.
You know what I'm saying.
You know how to play one parent against the other. And there've got to be some changes in jeff Co. Tracy Doorland has to go. She has to go. The superintendent of schools is terrible. She encourages just putting the school district between parents and children over and over again. She's probably excited that Kyle didn't get this job. In Kyle's last name Texters Walpole, and you can see this in Jimmy's column about this, But the entire district is going down the crapper.
One thing I want to know that I found really impressive when I was talking with Kyle about this story and doing my research, is he was a teacher for over two decades and clearly has a belief that politics have no place in the classroom.
He gave a story, and I loved this.
Of My favorite teachers were this way where he had parent teacher conference and that evening, two parents, parents of parents came in one after the other.
First said, you're too liberal, what's going on? The next, you're too conservative? What's going on? And that's exactly what it should be.
Were keep the students and the families guessing because you're actually not being political.
And yet that is the kind of.
Teacher that Jefferson County Schools had frozen out of one of their schools for political purposes because he dared to work with the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, not a conservative group, by the way, to identify who these teachers were.
As was, and this color Supreme Court, i think affirmed.
This, as is the right of the public to know when you have teachers walking out from the school for protest, the public has.
The right to know.
And that's the reason, one of the big reasons why they went after this conservative teacher.
At least that's what clearly appears to be the case.
And we'll see what happens if he does have a retaliation claim move forward in.
Court, we shall see.
Jimmy Seckenberger's column is that the Denver has at Today as a twice weekly column that is always good reading because I'm not even aware of anybody in the newspaper field that's doing the kind of investigative stuff that you are.
Jimmy.
Part of that is because you're an independent guy and you're an independent contractor, so you can go out there and dig into the stories that you like. But like I said, I want to keep the pressure on Jeff Coo and it's really really important that Jeffco's parents wake up and start showing up and demand better and more importantly, And I'm hoping, and I don't know if you've talked to anyone at Jeffco Kids first about this, I hope
they're getting candidates ready to run for school board. I hope they have people that we can support and give money to and get some decent people back on that school board.
When I first moved here Jeffco.
Schools, they were great, they were absolutely fantastic. And then to your point, back in twenty fourteen, the unions came in and they decided to put their little people on the school board, and now here's where we are anyway, all right, Jimmy, I appreciate you, man, and great Colin. We'll talk to you again soon. That's Jimmy Sangerburg. Everybody seak you, Jimmy. Let's take a quick time out when
we get back. Fascinating discussions about you, Ukraine and the United States' role in Ukraine are happening within the Republican Party, and I gotta tell you, I love it. We're going to talk about that next for a couple of minutes.