The D20 Accountability Project

Academy District 20 board Vice President, Susan Payne, built a talking point around Almost Perfect.

There's just one problem. The book’s own author’s note undercuts the scare story.

It points struggling teens toward parents, counselors, clergy, family friends, support groups, safety, caution, and medical care. In other words, exactly the adult-guided, harm-reduction posture Payne’s narrative pretended was missing.

That matters because this is how moral panic works. Quote the fear, omit the context, then dare the public to notice.

Read the receipts in the comments.

Washington didn’t make Academy District 20 do this.

Derrick Wilburn just wanted everyone to think it had.

At the June 11 , Wilburn treated H.R. 2616 like a finished federal mandate instead of what it actually was: a live bill still moving through the process.

House vote? Real.

Federal law? Not yet.

Senate certainty? Doing a lot of work for a sentence with no receipts.

D20 families deserve board members who can tell the difference between “ is considering this” and “Washington has already decided for us.”
Link in comments.

A quick recap of tonight’s meeting:

- The board changed preferred name policy likely in violation of state law. One of the board members used federal legislation that hasn’t even been voted out of Senate committee as justification. This was after over a dozen community members made very well spoken arguments in an attempt to explain all the various reasons why just simply calling someone what they want to be called is a good, valuable, and healthy thing.

- The board voted to ban the book Almost Perfect from D20 libraries, also likely in violation of state law. A board member somehow tied a book about a transgender kid to the fentanyl crisis. The discussion was an incredible level of misinformation that probably crossed the line of lying by omission. No exaggeration, it was jaw dropping at times.

- Oh, and they passed the 2026-2027 budget without even one tiny bit of meaningful discussion.

Based on everything in front of us, here’s what we predict next.

- The board will further weaken book reconsideration policy to give them even more control to dictate what they consider “immoral” and “obscene”.

- There will be multiple lawsuits as a result of the board’s decisions tonight. If that happens, it will serve no one other than Brad Miller, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and 1st and Fourteenth. It’s difficult to see these decisions as anything other than lawsuit generators. Or more of Miller’s legal test cases.

- The board will likely decide to make D20 maybe the sole partner/authorizer of ERBOCES.

- The board voted on a resolution tonight to direct the interim superintendent to engage with a consultant to conduct a needs assessment with regard to the permanent superintendent. Given that Aaron Salt is now the Executive Vice President for School Boards for Academic Excellence (the parent organization of CLAS) and SBAE and CLAS have started offering superintendent search services, it not a reach to assume that Salt will be that consultant.

- The board will also likely be following the path of D11 and discontinuing the district membership in CASB in favor of CLAS.

- And given the Executive Director of CLAS, Dan Snowberger, recently left his position as superintendent of Elizabeth, it’s not a stretch to assume he’s at least on the short list for superintendent. But Mike Miles could also be looking to make a move back to Colorado from Houston, especially for the D20 superintendent position, so we’d say he’s going to be on the short list as well.

Basically the board showed us all tonight what their tenure is going to be like.

And it’s not going to be pretty.

On May 7, the Academy District 20 board convened in executive session in part to receive, "legal advice on specific legal matters regarding board role in HR protocols."

On May 12, they met in executive session to receive legal advice on board oversight of superintendent performance.

On May 13, they met in executive session to, once again, receive legal advice on board oversight of superintendent performance.

On May 14, they met in executive session to receive legal advice regarding superintendent conduct and superintendent contract/employment

Later on May 14, they passed Resolution 207-26, which effectively terminated the superintendent.

That all is what makes this letter, which is part of the board packet for the June 11 meeting, very weird and interesting.

Notice the date.

Academy District 20's finalized FY 2026-2027 budget package is now in front of the board for adoption and a vote tomorrow night.

The headline number is big. About $686 million in total appropriations, or about $620 million once interfund transfers are backed out. But the real story is in the General Fund, where daily school operations live.

D20 projects $360.7 million in General Fund revenue.
It also budgets $367.9 million in expenditures and transfers.
That leaves a $7.23 million gap covered with beginning fund balance.

That doesn’t mean the sky is falling. Districts can use reserves, and D20 says part of this is tied to already-saved PSMI money for Douglass Valley Elementary. Credit where it’s due, the district doesn’t completely bury the gap. It puts the number in the materials.

But naming a drawdown isn’t the same as explaining the tradeoff.

And there’s another issue sitting right there in the fluorescent glow of the spreadsheet.

The budget includes a $4.84 million General Fund Security Services line. It also includes compensation schedules for security positions, including Director for Security. Rich Payne is D20’s Director for Security. Susan Payne sits on the Board of Education.

That does not, by itself, prove wrongdoing.

It does raise a very obvious public-governance question. If a board member is voting on a budget that includes a meaningful line item for a department run by her spouse, and if that employment brings income into her household, why is the public not getting a clear disclosure, conflict analysis, and recusal explanation before the vote?

Then there’s DAC.

Colorado’s accountability structure doesn't treat the District Accountability Committee as decorative civic wallpaper. DAC is supposed to recommend priorities to the board for spending district money. D20’s own budget packet says the DAC gathered school resource priorities through SAC consultation.
Good. That part matters.

But the budget doesn't give the public a meaningful crosswalk showing what happened next. Which DAC priorities were funded. Which were partly funded. Which were deferred. Which were politely placed in the ceremonial binder of community input and sent to live on a shelf.

That’s the missing piece.

The budget funds real things people care about. Staff compensation. Health premium support. Special education needs. Instruction and student support. Those are not fake priorities, and they shouldn’t be waved away.

But the public deserves plain answers to plain questions.

What exactly are we buying, what are we deferring, who benefits directly, how did DAC feedback shape the final choices, and what happens if the optimistic assumptions don’t behave?

Parents, teachers, staff, and students shouldn’t have to excavate those answers from a 1,200-page packet *the night before the vote*. Public trust gets built when the tradeoffs are visible before the gavel comes down, not translated afterward by whoever has the strongest stomach for PDF archaeology.

D20 can still do the responsible thing here.

Before adoption, the board should require plain-English reporting on reserves, staffing, special education costs, school-level impacts, one-time spending, DAC priority incorporation, and any board-member conflict or recusal issues tied to budget lines.

Because “balanced” shouldn’t mean “technically balanced after we spend down fund balance and hope the forecast holds.”

And “transparent” shouldn’t mean “we put it somewhere in the packet, good luck peasants.”

It should mean the public can see the balance for themselves.

Taking some inspiration from Elizabeth SchoolsWatch, we thought this was interesting.

Interesting …