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Pueblo District 70 school board member Anne Ochs abruptly announced her resignation during a board meeting Tuesday evening after a district parent called her out for helping quietly bring what’s been billed as Colorado’s “first public Christian school” into the district.
Hannah McDowell, who has three children in district schools, spoke during the public comment period at the end of the meeting. She criticized Ochs for keeping key information about the school, Riverstone Academy, from the public.
McDowell also expressed concern that Ochs failed to disclose she’d already signed a contract to work for Riverstone’s authorizer, Education reEnvisioned Board of Cooperative Educational Services, or ERBOCES, when she voted in June to allow the school to open within district boundaries.
McDowell said she learned about it from news coverage and cited details reported exclusively by Chalkbeat. She handed out copies of Chalkbeat stories and other documents to Ochs and the other Pueblo 70 board members after she spoke.
“Ms. Ochs, your lack of transparency and misleading statements are beyond disappointing,” she said. “Your constituents should not have to learn about a serious conflict of interest from a news article months after the fact.”
McDowell then asked Ochs, who was first elected in 2021 and has two years left in her current term, to resign. Ochs had been the president of the five-member board until a new president was selected at Tuesday’s meeting.
After McDowell’s three-minute statement, Ochs responded angrily.
“First off, I didn’t start with ERBOCES until July 1,” she said. “Secondly, I have to work for a living and this had nothing to do with Riverstone. I don’t work with Riverstone. I didn’t even know about Riverstone being one of the programs.”
Ochs finished by saying, “You know what? You’re getting your wish come true, because I was planning on resigning anyway. I’m done.”
Ochs’ announcement was met with a “thank you” from the audience and a smattering of applause.
Ochs then stood up, closed her laptop, and walked out of the board room. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
A district official said Wednesday morning that Ochs had not yet submitted a formal letter of resignation.
Riverstone opened with about 30 K-5 students in August, in a light industrial area just outside Pueblo city limits. Its website describes it as a public elementary school offering “a Christian foundation” and Christian curriculum, but its religious affiliation wasn’t widely known until early October.
That’s when the head of the public education cooperative that authorizes Riverstone publicly declared it the state’s first public Christian school. The next day, the state warned that it could withhold public funding from the school because the state constitution doesn’t allow religious public schools.
In November, Chalkbeat obtained an email suggesting that Riverstone was created to spur a lawsuit over the question of whether public money can be used for religious schools. The U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked on the issue in April.
The email came from Brad Miller, a lawyer who represents District 70 and ERBOCES. When he sent it on June 4, Ochs quickly responded saying the Pueblo 70 board would discuss putting the issue on the agenda, according to emails obtained by Chalkbeat.
But when the board voted in late June to allow Riverstone to open within district boundaries, Ochs didn’t publicly mention that Riverstone was a Christian school or that it was meant to spur a legal test case.
When asked in October by Chalkbeat if she’d known about Riverstone’s religious affiliation when she voted on it, Ochs first said no. The next day, she called back and said she knew the school planned to use Christian curriculum, but added, “to me that doesn’t make it a religious school.”
Ochs also acknowledged in October that she’d started a job with ERBOCES in July, but indicated that she’d interviewed for the position after the June vote on Riverstone.
But McDowell, the district parent who spoke Tuesday, said that Ochs signed the contract for her new job on June 9. That was two weeks before the June 24 Riverstone vote, according to a copy of the contract reviewed by Chalkbeat.
Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.
