21 search results for "Andrea Haitz"

Andrea Haitz, Conservatives, Elections, Ethics, Propaganda

D-51 School Board President Andrea Haitz violates School Board Ethics Code

by Anne Landman • March 21, 2023 • 15 Comments

Andrea Haitz’s Feb. 15 mass email violates an ethics rule that says school board members must refrain from using their board positions for partisan gain

District 51 School Board President Andrea Haitz violated the School Board’s ethics rules by sending out an overtly partisan, political mass email February 15, 2023 using her position as School Board President to promote her husband Greg’s bid to get a seat on Grand Junction City Council this April.

Andrea Haitz

Haitz wrote,

I am writing to you today because, despite our victory, the LEFT is still here seeking majorities in local government to make Grand Junction the Denver of the Western Slope.

We can put a stop to this by voting for conservatives in the April 4th Grand Junction City Council Election like my husband, Greg Haitz, who is running for District B. [Underlining emphasis in original.]

Haitz’s email violated Mesa County Valley School District 51’s Code of Ethics for School Board Members (pdf), Policy BCB-E, which says school board members will

Avoid being placed in a position of conflict of interest and refrain from using my board position for personal or partisan gain.

First Congregational Church welcomes trans kids amid furor over School Board President Andrea Haitz’s transphobic memes

by Anne Landman • May 16, 2022 • 3 Comments

The First Congregational Church sign (Photo: Shirley Zimmerman Kodis)

After the uproar over anti-transgender memes District 51 School Board President Andrea Haitz posted recently on her personal social media accounts, the First Congregational Church at 5th and Kennedy in Grand Junction took steps to make it clear to the public that their church welcomes transexual kids. The church is directly across the street from Grand Junction High School.

Church Administrator Beth Rakestraw said on her social media account that “Transkids are loved and welcomed at my church!” The church describes itself on its website as a “progressive Christian community” and says “We welcome all people regardless of race, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender preference, ability, and disability…At our church you don’t have to check your brain at the door. We believe that science and religion are not mutually exclusive. … No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.”

Haitz tried to walk back her posts by telling the Daily Sentinel that people had “misinterpreted” her memes because they “don’t understand satire,” but that was disproved after Heidi Hess of One Colorado revealed to the Daily Sentinel that Haitz belonged to the Facebook group Reboot 2022, whose mission statement says “Transgender is not an option.”

Andrea Haitz, Cindy Ficklin, Dangerous Republicans, Education, Embarrassing Republicans, Ethics, Ethnic/Minority, Extremism, Hate, Intolerance, LGBT issues, Lies, Racism, Transphobia

D-51 School Board President Andrea Haitz belonged to anti-transgender Facebook group

by Anne Landman • May 14, 2022 • 14 Comments

Screenshot of members of the transphobic Facebook group, Reboot 2022, taken on Wednesday, May 11, 2022, after which time her name was removed.

A May 13, 2022 Daily Sentinel article discussed the outrage District 51 School Board President Andrea Haitz’s recent anti-transgender social media posts generated among people in the valley.

In her own defense, Haitz told the Sentinel she didn’t mean the memes to be hurtful, and that she “has gay and lesbian friends.” Haitz said the “memes had been misunderstood” because “people don’t always understand satire,” and said that people “made up what they thought I meant by it.”

But people didn’t make up anything, and they most definitely did not misinterpret the intent of Haitz’s posts.

How do we know?

Emails between D-51 Board Member Andrea Haitz and Brad Miller of Miller Farmer Law encourage Haitz to avoid RFP process

by Anne Landman • December 18, 2021 • 6 Comments

John Williams, District 51’s current in-house lawyer, graduated from G.J.H.S, served on the D-51 School Board from 2013-2020, then stepped down from the Board to serve as District 51’s in-house attorney, saving the District around $250,000/year, or about half what outside law firms were charging the District.

AnneLandmanBlog has obtained the internal emails exchanged between newly-elected School District 51 board member Andrea Haitz and attorney Brad Miller of the Miller Farmer law firm of Colorado Springs.

Almost soon as she was sworn in, Haitz started pushing to hire the Miller Farmer law firm to handle all of District 51’s legal work, which would mean firing the District’s current in-house attorney, John Williams, who currently handles most of the District’s legal work. Using Williams has provided tremendous savings to the District over using an outside law firm.

Haitz calls another D-51 School Board Special Meeting on short notice, this time to be held Wed., 2/9 @ 3:15 p.m. in the Butler Board Room

by Anne Landman • February 8, 2022 • 3 Comments

School Board President Andrea Haitz is clearly rattled in this 7 minute video of last night’s meeting (2/7/22, above), taken before the Board went into Executive Session. Her voice quivers, and she gets items for the meeting out of order.

District 51 School Board President Andrea Haitz has scheduled another Special Board Meeting on Wednesday, February 9 at 3:15 p.m. in the Harry Butler Board Room at R-5, same location as yesterday’s meeting. Like the one on Monday night, this one was also scheduled with very short notice. People have noticed the time of day when Haitz plans to hold the meeting will make it difficult for teachers to attend.

Does Greg Haitz’s furtive editing of his “Immune Support Pack” page indicate consciousness of guilt?

by Anne Landman • January 6, 2022 • 12 Comments

Chiropractor Greg Haitz previously ran for Grand Junction City Council. His wife, Andrea, is now on D51 School Board.

Last month we noticed that Grand Junction chiropractor Greg Haitz of the Rimrock Wellness Center at 12th and Patterson, was marketing his own proprietary “Rimrock Wellness Center” brand of dietary supplement, “Immune Support Pack,” with a description that inferred the product could help mitigate or protect against Covid-19, or “C19”:

Rimrock Wellness Center’s “Immune Support Pack” description as it appeared on December 25, 2021, linking the product to protection from, and mitigation of Covid-19

The National Institutes of Health currently warns Americans that

“Data are insufficient to support recommendations for or against the use of any vitamin, mineral, herb or other botanical, fatty acid, or other dietary supplement ingredient to prevent or treat COVID-19.”

At the same time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is actively monitoring for firms that are marketing products using fraudulent claims that they can prevent, mitigate or treat COVID-19.

After the blog about this product was published, we noticed Haitz edited his “Immune Support Pack” web page to remove the descriptive paragraph previously seen above, and instead he had substituted a list of five published studies:

Local chiropractor Greg Haitz is behind “Stop the Mandate GJ,” hawks unproven supplements for Covid-19

by Anne Landman • December 25, 2021 • 6 Comments

Stop the Mandate GJ’s street address matches that of Greg Haitz’s business, Rimrock Wellness Center

Greg Haitz, owner of Rimrock Wellness Center

Rimrock Wellness Center, a chiropractic office at 12th and Patterson that also sells fat-loss treatments and supplements, has the same street address as “Stop the Mandate GJ,” the group agitating to stop hospitals, nursing homes and doctors’ offices from requiring health workers be vaccinated against Covid-19, the highly communicable, often deadly disease causing the pandemic. At the same time it is encouraging people to remain unvaccinated, Rimrock Wellness Center is also trying to profit off unvaccinated people’s fear of getting Covid-19, as well as their misperceptions of the relative safety and efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines.

Haitz fraudulently promotes his own brand of supplement as protective against Covid-19

School Board candidate Haitz sends out offensive fundraising email

by Anne Landman • August 7, 2021 • 6 Comments

Fundraising email from Andrea Haitz announcing her campaign for D-51 school board

School District 51 Board Candidate Andrea Haitz sent out a red-meat fundraising email in July that offended teachers, parents and D-51 employees who have been working hard to give kids the best education possible while struggling with all the difficulties imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Haitz said,

“Politics is in the way of our children’s future. Political agendas are being jammed down our kids’ throats. Necessary tools that were once taught, like critical thinking, have now been replaced with divisive ideologies and revisionist history.

I will not watch our kids be brainwashed. I am taking a stand!

Will you join me by making a contribution to my campaign?”

The email was a dog-whistle designed to extract donations from far-right conservatives who fear “Critical Race Theory,” (CRT) a body of legal and academic scholarship that proposes that race is a social and not a biological construct, and that discusses how race and a history of institutionalized racism have created and perpetuate a system that broadly disadvantages people of color in American society.

As D-51 School Board’s conservative majority rushes to close East Middle School, it fast-tracks the opening of a religiously-affiliated charter school

by Anne Landman • March 13, 2023 • 36 Comments

District 51 School Board President Andrea Haitz

As the conservative District 51 School Board majority headed by Board President Andrea Haitz hurries to shut down East Middle School, it is fast-tracking the opening of yet another charter school, the Ascent Classical Academy, a project of Hillsdale College, a private Christian religious school located in south-central Michigan.

Ascent Classical Academy uses a curriculum advanced by Hillsdale’s Barney Charter School Initiative, “an outreach program of Hillsdale College devoted to the revitalization of public education through the launch and support of classical K-12 charter schools.”

Ascent Classical Academy plans to open in Grand Junction in August, 2023, at 545 31 Road, the building that formerly housed the Rocky Mountain Gun Club, just as the District puts the finishing touches on shutting down East Middle School, a high-performing traditional public school in the heart of downtown Grand Junction.

Teachers union president resigns via email amid flap over school closures & conservative school board members’ rejection of health clinic at GJHS

by Anne Landman • March 11, 2023 • 7 Comments

Timothy Couch, President of the Mesa Valley Education Association (MVEA), resigned via email March 8, on the same day the three-member conservative District 51 School Board majority ignored the pleas of students and voted to reject an offer by Marillac Health to operate a grant-funded, school-based health clinic at Grand Junction High School. The three Board members rejected the clinic at a time when homelessness among D-51 students is rapidly increasing and a Youth Risk Behavior survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) (pdf) found poor mental health and suicidal thoughts and behaviors among students are increasing nationwide. According to the CDC, in 2021, almost 60% of female students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year and nearly 25% made a suicide plan. Suicide is also a growing problem among Mesa County youth and suicide prevention is a “health priority” for Mesa County Public Health.

Grand Junction City Council candidate rundown 2023

by Anne Landman • March 10, 2023 • 10 Comments

For this article, I drew from publicly available sources, including the candidates’ own websites and social media accounts, newspaper articles, the candidates’ financial disclosure statements filed with the City of Grand Junction, background-checks done on TruthFinder.com, and public records requests to the Grand Junction Police Department (GJPD) for records of any contact the candidates had with local law enforcement agencies. I felt the law enforcement piece was necessary after seeing Mesa County voters elect people to public office who were later involved in theft, falsifying time cards, embezzlement, assault, plagiarism, DUI, double-dipping, election tampering and other offenses.

These City Council candidates are asking voters to hire them for a job. City taxpayers pay their salaries. The candidates should be background-checked.

Anti-transgender, racist hate mail sent to 92 year old School District 51 retiree; Local Republican political leaders may be contributing to undercurrent of hatred in Mesa County

by Anne Landman • October 14, 2022 • 8 Comments

“Citizens District 51 Defund Vote” sent hate mail postmarked Oct. 11, 2022 to a 92 year old School District 51 retiree in Grand Junction

My 92 year old neighbor, who worked for School District 51 over forty years ago, received this hate mail yesterday, with the following computer-printed in screaming all-caps, racist, anti-transgender hate letter glued to the back of the picture with the child at the chalkboard:

My neighbor is pretty tough, but the line that said “OL’ BITCH” really saddened her.

In addition to showing that racism and homophobia in Grand Junction are alive and thriving, this rude correspondence raises several questions:

— How did the sender get the address of this person?

D-51 School Board members attend seminar in how to fight equity and inclusion policies

by Anne Landman • August 31, 2022 • 9 Comments

“Stand for the Constitution,” the right wing extremist Mesa County group that endorsed and defended Tina Peters, also endorsed and promoted Angela Lema, Andrea Haitz and Will Jones for School Board. All three candidates ran as a far right wing extremist slate. Now two of them are getting training in how to battle policies that aim to help all children feel welcome and accepted at D-51 schools.

The Colorado Times Recorder is reporting that D-51 School Board President Andrea Haitz and D-51 Board Member Angela Lema attended a seminar at a Grand Junction hotel on August 26 called “Save Our Schools,” put on by Heritage Action for America, an affiliate of the right wing Heritage Foundation. The seminar taught people how to fight equity and inclusion policies in schools and provided resources to help them.

What are equity and inclusion policies, anyway?

D-51 School Board President’s transphobic social media posts draw condemnation

by Anne Landman • May 9, 2022 • 12 Comments

District 51 School Board President posted this photo to social media recently on her personal account

Recent social media posts by District 51 School Board President Andrea Haitz, and one in particular that she posted on Mother’s Day, are drawing condemnation, disgust and shock from many Mesa County residents who saw them.

Angry crowd faces down School Board at their meeting Monday, 2/7

by Anne Landman • February 8, 2022 • 3 Comments

Screenshot of the packed, angry but well-behaved crowd that faced down the new School Board President Andrea Haitz and the other new school board members Monday night, 2/7/22, as they made moves toward possibly firing district administrators. The screenshot is from a video taken at the beginning of the meeting, before the Board went into executive session to discuss the employment contracts of Superintendent Diana Sirko, Assistant Superintendent Brian Hill and the Director of Equity and Inclusion, Tracy Gallegos. An equal number of people were outside. A student in front is holding a sign that says “Don’t make me use my INSIDE VOICE!”

Andrea Haitz, Angela Lema, Conservatives, Dangerous Republicans, Education, Ethics, Pandemic, politics, Willie Jones

Looks like District 51’s conservative school board majority is getting ready to fire Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent and Director of Equity & Inclusion

by Anne Landman • February 6, 2022 • 19 Comments

Meeting agenda quietly put up on the School Board’s website on short notice announcing a special meeting the next day to discuss employment contracts of the Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent and Director of Equity and Inclusion

The District 51 School Board’s new conservative majority — Andrea Haitz, Angela Lema and Willie Jones — appear to be getting ready to fire School District Superintendent, Diana Sirko, Assistant Superintendent Brian Hill and Tracy Gallegos, the District’s Director of Equity and Inclusion, who was hired into that position in July, 2021.

The three Board members gave short notice about a special meeting to be held on Monday, February 5 at 5:00 p.m. discuss these three employees’ contracts with attorneys they just hired in January to serve as their own representatives: David Price and Tammy Eret of Hoskin, Farina and Kampf.

The Board members produced the agenda on Saturday evening, 2/5/22, and then quietly slipped it onto the School Board’s meeting website (pdf) on Sunday evening, 2/6/21.

New conservative school board members violate CO Open Meetings Law, make decisions in secret

by Anne Landman • December 17, 2021 • 13 Comments

Newly-elected D-51 School Board member Andrea Haitz promised transparency, but is violating open meetings laws and attempting to enact policy without public comment. At about 4:43 into the meeting video, after a suggestion that the Board could get more information about potential law firms to hire, Haitz says “There’s a certain point where you can get too much information.”

It took no time at all for the newly sworn-in District 51 School Board members to violate Colorado’s Open Meetings Law (pdf), violate their campaign promises of transparency, and indicate their willingness to spend excessive taxpayer funds for no clear reason, and they did it all in one breathtaking move they sprang on everyone a full four hours into their first board meeting December 14.

Tina Peters supporters yell expletives at people trying to ask questions at an event billed as a “press conference”

by Anne Landman • October 11, 2021 • 6 Comments

An event held by embattled right wing Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters at the old county courthouse that was billed as a “press conference” turned out to be more of a rally of her supporters Monday, as the event was poorly attended by local media outlets. Two newspapers were represented, and no television stations were there.

Peters’ talk seemed to focus on impugning the Mesa County Commissioners for entering into another contract with Dominion Voting Systems to provide secure voting equipment to the County and keeping it maintained until 2029. Peters also waved what she said was a stack of emails from the county commissioners that she had obtained that she believes show the commissioners doing something detrimental to county citizens. Peters insisted she had exposed massive voter fraud in Mesa County, but still has not provided conclusive proof.

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