The d-51 school board has been in the spotlight lately — following a controversial decision involving school closures… And voting down a “grand junction high school” health clinic.\
and now… D-51 board president ‘Andrea Haitz’ *may have violated state and district ethics rules — by campaigning and soliciting funds for her husband, who’s running for a seat on the grand junction city council. Dannie Condon investigates.
The trouble started when district 51 schoolboard president andrea haitz issued a mass email to potential voters endorsing her husband greg haitz and soliciting funds for his grand junction city council campaign–using her official title as school board president.
In the email haitz appears to lay out political bias and an agenda saying “a few years ago, our school board had a progressive majority. Fortunately we fought back.” and “they elected me along with two other conservatives.” the email targets what she calls “the left.”
haitz’ email goes on to clearly solicit money for her husbands campaign.
Andrea signs off identifying herself as a mom, real estate agent and expressly identifies her position as school board president.
Haitz’ email appears to break two rules on the d51 school board member code of ethics: first her endorsement of conservative politics and public criticism of what she calls the “left” and second blatant solicitation for campaign funds to benefit her husband’s council race.
D 51’s code of ethics appears to mandate that school board members “avoid being placed in a position of conflict of interest” and seems to demand they not use their position as a board member quote “for personal or partisan gain”
the manner which haitz went about issuing the email also may violate the agreement to “take no private action that will compromise the board or administration”
we asked haitz for a response. She emailed krex a statement characterizing the entire email as quote an “oversight.” haitz admits the error is hers to quote “own and correct” she goes on to write it was “inadvertent”.
Haitz statement to krex says the email was written in february and that the error was quote, “caught and corrected.”
recipients tell krex haitz already sent that mass email to her husband’s campaign email list just 6 days ago at 8 am.
It’s unclear when she sent the revised letter which removes her request for donations and position as school board president but re-inforces her husband’s conservative stance and endorsements.
The next question is what repercussions will the school board president face if d 51 legal council finds she violated board ethics, and will the board enforce it’s stated ethics rules going forward?
We asked the district to clarify if d-51 legal council found that haitz email *violated board ethics.
a spokesperson tells krex, quote: “the district has no additional information to provide at this time.”
they say they’ll provide a timestamp to krex — showing when the amended letter from haitz was mailed to the same recipients.
we also tried to reach ‘Greg Haitz’ for a statement, but received no response.
