A board member at Lafayette’s K-12 Peak to Peak Charter School is facing a recall election, with those behind the recall saying he doesn’t meet board member behavior expectations or follow conflict management and conflict of interest guidelines.
Peak to Peak’s board recently accepted a petition to recall Ari Axelrod and set voting for Peak to Peak parents and staff members from Friday to June 10. To recall a board member, 30% of eligible voters need to cast a vote and 66% need to vote in favor of the recall. A replacement board member, out of four candidates, will be elected at the same time, with that choice declared moot if the recall fails.
Four members of the Peak to Peak community originally started a Change.org recall petition in May, which received 266 valid signatures — 202 signatures were needed to meet the threshold of 10% of Peak to Peak parents and staff to trigger a recall election.
Axelrod challenged the validity of using Change.org for signature collection, and recall organizers were required to start a new petition. That petition also met the signature requirements, allowing the recall to move forward.
Axelrod denied that he didn’t meet behavior expectations or follow board member guidelines, instead saying he has focused on making sure process and policies are followed during his tenure as a board member. He is in his first year on the board and his term expires in 2023.
“The allegations are absolutely 100% without merit,” he said.
‘Fearful’ of ongoing behavior
In the petition, organizers wrote, “We are fearful that the ongoing behavior of Mr. Axelrod, continued defamation of community members, and assault on the morale of our campus community will cause irreparable damage to Peak to Peak.”
Issues raised in the petition include that Axelrod “personally harassed several Peak to Peak staff members” by sending them emails after they spoke at a board meeting.
Axelrod said the emails he sent weren’t harassing. He said he thanked the speakers, acknowledged their concerns and explained his position on equity, his focus on process and his vote against two contracts.
He said one of the organizers of the recall, Jaimee Miller, started the recall after he questioned her communications consulting contract with the school, as well as questioning an equity consulting contract.
His concerns centered on the need for a consultant when the school already employs a communications director and that the contract wasn’t signed by the executive director of operations as required, he said.
Kelly Reeser, Peak to Peak’s executive director of education, said she signed the contract because the operations director was out of the country at the time, adding he later signed it. She added that Miller was paid $15,800 over four months to write articles and fulfill other communications tasks.
“He’s making a lot of allegations and trying to find problems with things and doing very little to help the school,” Reeser said. “It is taking away from our ability to focus on serving students.”
Miller, a former Peak to Peak board member, also denied that Axelrod questioning her contract was the reason she started the recall petition. Instead, she said, it’s based on his actions as a board member.
She said it’s “expected that members of our board of directors will set the tone for healthy, respectful and thoughtful engagement with each other, our school leaders, our educators, and most of all set an example for our students and their families.”
Axelrod, she said, “has violated the expectations of this coveted leadership role through his actions, words and threatening behavior toward other board members, educators and staff.”
Website at issue
The petition also calls out a website created by a family member of Axelrod, saying the site’s articles “are in direct conflict with the school’s communication pathways and the character curriculum taught to students regarding online behavior.”
Axelrod’s wife, Robyn Axelrod, started p2pexposed.com, a website that criticizes the school’s leadership, in April. The website initially was created anonymously, but she later claimed it after the recall petition was created.
She said she started the website to clear her name after an email sent to the school community by Peak to Peak board President Colleen Elliott “deliberately misrepresented” a public information request that she made for the results of a secondary student climate survey.
In her request, Robyn Axelrod asked for responses to demographic questions that weren’t shared publicly with the school community, including students’ race, preferred pronouns and sexual identity. She added that the school failed to notify parents in advance and provide an opportunity to opt out, as required by federal law, of a survey that asked sensitive questions.
Her request initially was denied, with school officials saying that survey data included information protected under student data privacy laws. In response, she requested that school leaders apply to a court for permission to withhold the information, a remedy allowed under the Colorado Open Records Act.
The issue ultimately was resolved without legal action after she clarified she wasn’t seeking individual student responses. Peak to Peak agreed to seek parent consent for future surveys and provided her with aggregate survey results.
While the recall petition references his wife’s website, Ari Axelrod said, he wasn’t involved in either the survey information request or the website. He said his wife’s “rights as a citizen did not end when I was voted onto the board,” adding that he doesn’t share information with her that isn’t publicly available and has recused himself from board votes that involved her.
Another allegation in the recall petition is that Axelrod has sacrificed the school’s success and reputation. He responded that the recall’s organizers and current board members are upset by his unwillingness to go along with their voting decisions.
“I got pushback on how I’m expected to vote and behave,” he said. “There were too many conversations outside of school board meetings that I felt were not appropriate.”
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