unknown 0:00

The further.

SPEAKER_07 0:09

Good morning, Boulder County. It's Wednesday, September 30th. I'm Shay Castle, and this is the Frequency, a weekly local podcast covering the news, events, and voices shaping the Boulder Valley. This episode is brought to you by Boulder Bookstore. Come visit Boulder's Community Bookstore on the Pearl Street Mall. Besides having an amazing selection of books, they host author events every week. On Thursday, October 15th, see Pam Houston, author of Animals Taught Me Everything. The event begins at 6.30 p.m. at the Boulder Public Library. Visit BoulderBookstore.com to get tickets, see a full list of upcoming events, and to support the store's Literacy Foundation in its mission to donate books to schools and students in need. That link, once again, is BoulderBookstore.com. Today, we're talking about school closures, law enforcement, license plate reading cameras, and more. Here are your local headlines. Tyler Riley was allowed to resign from his job in 2024 instead of being fired for cause, a common practice among law enforcement officers who violate department policy or state law. Five years prior, Riley was charged with driving while impaired and careless driving, along with having a firearm while intoxicated. It is unclear whether his resignation was related to these charges. A request for comment was declined. Personnel information is available via an open records request, a spokesperson told The Frequency. Riley also allegedly fired rounds at several police vehicles in Broomfield the same evening he shot at the Boulder County Sheriff's Office around midnight on Monday. No one was injured in either incident. In the city of Boulder, the police oversight panel told City Council recently their role has been greatly diminished due to a series of policy changes. The panel has reviewed just one case in the past six months. Earlier this summer, Boulder Reporting Lab found that the Boulder Police Department closed at least 21 complaints against officers without referring them to the panel since late 2025. The panel was created in 2020 after police officers drew weapons on Zaid Atkinson, a black student of Naropa, picking up trash outside his Boulder home. The 11-member panel has been fraught with complications and controversy almost since its inception, pausing reviews in 2023 after council removed one of its appointed panelists. Two founding members resigned after the city changed rules on case reviews and member selection, giving the panel less power. Boulder Police Department has had several high-profile cases of misconduct during the panel's time. They include multiple legal settlements for excessive force and the demotion and discipline of a detective and four other officers for failing to close nearly 50 cases, some of which had reached the statute of limitations. Those cases included domestic violence and sexual assault. Boulder City Council is conducting a five-year review of the police oversight panel and its effectiveness. At a September 24th study session, they met with panel members and the city's independent monitor, who serves as a go-between for the panel and the police department. The independent monitor also expressed frustration with a lack of cooperation from the police department.

SPEAKER_06 3:43

Federal immigration agents arrested a person in Longmont late last week. The Colorado Rapid Response Network says at least two ICE vehicles pulled over an SUV Friday after boxing in the vehicle as it drove north on Atwood at 10th Avenue. Witnesses said two ICE agents forcibly detained the SUV's driver. One of the ICE vehicles reportedly did not have any visible license plates. Friday's arrest comes as ICE activity surges in Colorado. ICE arrested nearly 500 people in Colorado in July alone, according to Axios, which said it was the highest monthly total in more than a year.

SPEAKER_07 4:21

Also in Longmont, the city has delayed the installation of 15 license plate reading cameras operated by Arizona-based company Axon. The city voted to switch to Axon from Flock as operator of license plate reading cameras after significant community pushback. As part of that switch, Flock cameras were removed earlier this year. Before putting up new cameras, the city announced it was delaying the process in light of evolving state laws and community concern about the technology, which has been likened to mass surveillance and warrantless searches.

SPEAKER_05 4:51

People showed out and people really cared on both sides of that topic. And so people are pretty engaged and involved. And because of that engagement and involvement, city council was going to switch to a contract with Axon, which is basically just a different company. And even that seems to have stalled recently due to a lot of community pushback against ALPRs generally and also just kind of those companies. And so it seems like it's still actually a moving target in Longmont. Basically, they have paused putting up their next round of Axon cameras. So there's 15 cameras that were planned to go up and they're not going up.

SPEAKER_07 5:30

Those are the voices of two of three women running the Longmont City Council Recap Podcast. The show is exactly what it sounds like. They go to Longmont City Council meetings and then recap them so listeners know what's going on in their communities. We'll be hearing more from the Longmont City Council recap team in our upcoming shows. Thanks again for briefing us on the developing story. Find a link to sign up for those recaps, along with more information on license plate reader technology, in our show notes. Boulder Valley School Board last week voted 5-2 to close four schools and move or consolidate four others amid declining enrollment. The decision came roughly one month after the district released its proposal and amid considerable pushback from parents at impacted schools. Tuesday's school board meeting included more than an hour of public comment from students, teachers, and others opposed to the plan.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Good evening. My name is Nate Holzhauser, and I'm in the fourth grade at Birch Elementary. Three schools in three years. That's my projected plan if this proposal goes through. So my fifth grade year will be in a new school, not knowing where anything is, not knowing who the teachers are, and my friend group split up.

SPEAKER_03 6:41

Last time I said that this is the wrong way to fix what the district wants to fix. Here's why. At school, my teacher doesn't just give me an assignment and say, go do whatever you want. She gives me a rubric. The rubric says what I need to do to show I learned what I'm supposed to learn. It tells me what she thinks good work looks like. And that's what I think is missing from the resilient school's plan. You are the teacher, BBSD is a student, and you gave them a really big project. You said the project needs to include some really important ideas like making better learning environments and using resources better. But where's the rubric? How will you know if BBSD picked the right way to meet your big ideas? How will you know if these changes actually make school better for me and other kids like me? Because right now I don't see how closing Douglas and sending me to Heatherwood makes my learning experience better.

SPEAKER_04 7:21

I understand the problem with declining enrollment is a real issue. I also understand that the easiest solution is to close or consolidate schools. What I'm asking you to consider is the following. Is the easiest solution the best solution for our students? I wouldn't be an amazing teacher if I didn't come here today to advocate for my students and my kids. Can we come together to come up with an innovative and creative way to solve the problem of decloning declining enrollment that does not involve closing or consolidating schools?

SPEAKER_07 7:52

Board President Nicole Rajpal said the decision was difficult, but ultimately necessary. Enrollment is set to decline by some 5,000 students by 2030. School districts in Adams County and Denver, as well as St. Rain Valley, are closing schools as the state's population growth slows. Opponents to BBSD's proposal suggested the district could pursue alternative school closures. They touted Pooter Valley for its refusal to consolidate two years ago amid its own shrinking student population. Last week, Pooder Valley announced a plan to close nine schools, including a high school, CPR News reports.

SPEAKER_08 8:28

If we vote to not close schools today, not only are we saddling a future board with this difficult work, we are actively creating a segregated school district. A school district in which students who live in neighborhoods with a lot of children or who have parents that can drive them to better resource schools will have better and more robust learning opportunities than those that cannot. Not only are those conditions really unfair for our students, they are impossible for our staff. And we no longer have the resources to continue to soften those experiences and pretend the impacts of declining enrollment are not real.

SPEAKER_07 9:00

BDSD closures will take effect for the 2027-2028 school year. A parents group advocating against the closures has not yet decided what their next step might be, a spokesperson told Boulder Valley Frequency. Thanks to Tyler Hickman from our sister podcast at the Mountaineer for compiling those clips from Tuesday's school board meeting. In light of the closures, I spoke with local child psychologist Carol Calkins about how parents can navigate the stress of a new school for their children.

SPEAKER_10 9:26

It's very important for parents, first of all, to have their own anxieties separate from that of the child or the children. Because kids are sponges and they suck up anxiety. And so if you present as, oh my God, this is going to be the worst thing ever, how horrible. It's okay to have those feelings and those concerns. Those may be very real, but not in the context of presenting it to your child. When you present it to your child, you say, gosh, this is really gonna be hard. What would help you make it easier? Should we start some friend groups now from the other schools? Shall we do some socializing outside of school before it happens? Or, you know, I'll meet with the parents and we'll come up with some ideas to make it fun or less frightening for you guys because it's all gonna be okay. So the presentation of calm and resources is very, very important for children and adolescents. Now, having had a year to get used to the idea, I think is very important as a transition. So if the teachers and the family are starting to talk about it now, they can do visits to where they may be going, to the school where they are going and get to know. Usually, kids who are on an IEP education, individualized education program, they're assigned as case manager. That is a teacher or a social worker, someone on staff that will make sure that the IEPs are accommodated. So to have connection between the school now and the school where they're going to have case managers connect and have the kids connect, it is transition. So to really be cognizant, we may not be able to change the decision that's been made, but we can certainly work very hard to help with the transition. And that's something I've done in the past.

SPEAKER_07 11:36

And what can parents do to support themselves? How do you build community and support as like a man, this kind of sucks, but not get mired in the like, hey, this sucks, so that that you're communicating that out to your kid all the time.

SPEAKER_10 11:48

That's right. We don't want to next door the situation with the parents because what happens, what can have happened in support groups is they get mired and stuck in the issue and the complaining. And it doesn't ever really get sometimes it doesn't ever really get to the problem solving piece or the okay, yeah, this blows. What are we gonna do? And the what are we gonna do is what's of course gives everyone agency and advocacy to move forward.

SPEAKER_07 12:20

Thanks again to Carol for speaking with me. Learn more at Colkins Therapyforchange.com or just follow the link in our show notes. That's all for today's show. Join us Friday when we dive into one of the biggest taxes on boulder ballots, a $400 million bond for repair, replacement, and maintenance of city buildings like rec centers and the police headquarters. I'm gonna end the show with a little teaser from that episode. Here is one more thing.

SPEAKER_09 13:22

We have an enormous facilities backlog, almost $500 million of work that needs to happen. So it is a cost savings over time, right? Is it a cost savings next year? No. I'm thinking at the government scale. Over the course of decades to century, this does become a cost saving mechanism. So we are saving money for future generations the same way that if 50 years ago people have been putting aside money and keeping on top of maintenance for all of the buildings that we were buying and converting and renovating back then, we would be in a very different place right now.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Yeah. I won't say more on that. What you doing try to impress? The little boy is on your head.