William “Bill” Sawvel has a new letter in The Gazette about Academy District 20, Superintendent Jinger Haberer, progressives, library books, student name policies, Safe2Tell, Susan Payne, Brad Miller, and the usual moral-panic furniture.
Subtle stuff.
Very statesmanlike.
Practically Federalist Paper material, if Madison had spent more time yelling at librarians.
But Sawvel’s letter only works if readers accept the frame he is selling. We do not.
The real issue in the Haberer suspension is not that “progressives” are upset. It is not library books. It is not whether some parents want schools to respect transgender students. It is not even, at least not yet, whether Haberer should remain superintendent.
The real issue is that the public still cannot see how this happened.
What The Record Actually Shows
On January 8, 2026, the D20 Board of Education approved Resolution 15-26, described in board materials as approval of the superintendent contract through 2028.
Four months later, the public record turns into a hallway with most of the lights off.
On May 7, the board held an executive session for legal advice and a personnel matter. On May 12 and May 13, the board held special meetings for superintendent performance evaluation and legal advice about board oversight. On May 14, the regular meeting included another executive session, followed by Resolution 207-26 on superintendent contract and employment matters. On May 19, the board noticed Resolution 208-26 to appoint an acting superintendent. The ASD20 public meeting portal is the place to follow those official meeting records as they appear.
That is the public sequence.
Maybe every legal box was checked. Maybe. But “legal” and “transparent” are not twins. Some days they barely know each other.
The public is not asking to read privileged legal advice. The public is not asking for private personnel files. The public is asking how a superintendent moved from a contract-through-2028 action to suspension and replacement in a matter of days, mostly through closed-door meetings, vague agenda language, and after-the-fact public choreography. Even The Gazette’s May 15 report made clear that the public explanation remained narrow while the leadership rupture was enormous.
That is not a left-versus-right problem.
That is a public-power problem.
Why Sawvel’s Frame Matters
This is why Sawvel’s letter is useful to people who would rather see the community argue about “wolves” than records.
The letter takes a governance crisis and stuffs it into the familiar costume closet: books, progressives, parental rights, Safe2Tell, transgender students, and the claim that certain members of the public should be ignored because they are the wrong kind of public.
That is not parent empowerment.
That is gatekeeping with a YouTube livestream.
Sawvel is not just a random concerned citizen who wandered into a letter-writing mood. As this site has already documented in Dr. Bill Sawvel’s Dissertation Reveals the Playbook Behind His Book Bans, he is associated with Take Back Our Schools and d20books.com, where complaint templates, excerpts, and prepackaged participation help turn book panic into political pressure.
His own academic work focused on “Catalytic Mechanisms: Starting, Stopping, or Altering the Course of a Movement.” Our prior analysis showed how that framework maps onto the book-ban campaign: inflated popularity, low-friction participation, proxy messengers, symbolic panic, and goal ambiguity.
Fear is the hook. Power is the prize.
So when Sawvel now tries to turn Haberer into another morality play about progressives, readers should recognize the method. This is not just commentary. It is another deployment of the same political frame.
The Brad Miller Fog Machine
The Brad Miller section deserves its own cleanup.
Sawvel treats Miller’s legal argument about ACA Name Changes like a tablet carried down from Sinai. It was not.
Miller may have had a narrow point. If D20’s ACA policy cited FERPA carelessly around official student-record amendments, then yes, the district should fix the citation. FERPA gives parents and eligible students rights around education records, including access, amendment, and some control over disclosure. Nobody serious is saying school districts should improvise their way through federal student-record law.
But that is not the same question as whether a student may use a chosen or preferred name at school without changing the official record.
D20’s existing ACA framework separates those issues. Students may use a chosen or preferred first name at school without altering the legal record, while official-record name or gender changes require a parent or guardian signature or a court order.
That distinction is not decorative.
It is the whole ballgame.
Colorado’s HB24-1039 requires schools to honor a student’s chosen name and adopt a written policy for doing so. D20’s own discrimination procedure also points back to ACA when describing intentional refusal to use a student’s chosen name as harassment under Colorado law.
So the real work is not pretending FERPA automatically answers every ACA question. The real work is balancing parent involvement, student safety, privacy, antidiscrimination law, school operations, and official-record rules.
Hard work is annoying that way.
It does not fit neatly on a protest sign.
This is also why D20 families were right to raise concerns when the district brought Miller into its legal orbit. We have already documented how Brad Miller’s Open Meetings advice cost Woodland Park taxpayers nearly $150,000, and why more than 1,000 community members urged ASD20 leaders to reject hiring Brad Miller. Legal strategy is not abstract. It shapes public risk.
Books, Parents, And The Line Sawvel Keeps Blurring
Sawvel also retells the 2022 and 2023 library fights as if the dispute was whether parents should have oversight.
That is not the dispute.
Parents should know what their own children are reading. Parents should have tools. Parents should have a process. No serious person disputes that.
The question is whether one parent, one faction, or one pressure campaign gets to decide what all students can access.
“My child will not read this” is different from “your child cannot access this.”
Sawvel blurs that line because the blur does work for him.
The public history matters here. In 2023, The Gazette reported that D20 had returned disputed materials to library shelves after inconsistent removals and pledged to follow policy moving forward. That story was not about parents being helpless. It was about process, consistency, viewpoint neutrality, and whether book challenges would be handled through rules or pressure.
That is still the question.
Safe2Tell Does Not Explain The Haberer Sequence
Sawvel’s Safe2Tell section does not rescue the argument.
Yes, school safety matters. Yes, threat-assessment procedures deserve careful review. Yes, Susan Payne’s background in Safe2Tell and school safety is part of the board’s current political reality.
But none of that explains how the board moved from a January contract-through-2028 action to a May suspension track. It does not explain the May 7 executive session. It does not explain the version shifts around May 14 resolution numbers. It does not explain what the public can and cannot see.
It mostly does what the rest of the letter does. It drags another emotionally charged subject onto the stage, points dramatically, and hopes nobody notices the central plot has not moved.
Nice trick.
Still a trick.
The Transparency Failure Is The Story
The public does not need another round of culture-war fog.
It needs records.
It needs the adopted Resolution 207-26. It needs the final May 14 minutes. It needs the signed Resolution 208-26 or proof of what action was actually taken. It needs the written notice served under the superintendent contract, with legally protected personnel details redacted where required. It needs a clear explanation of the May 7 meeting basis, the hearing process, and whether any public funds are now at risk because of how this was handled.
That is not radical.
That is basic public governance.
Sawvel’s letter ends by urging board members to stop paying attention to the wrong members of the public. Read that again. A letter supposedly about parental rights ends by arguing that some parents and residents should be ignored.
There is the tell.
The real issue is not whether people can disagree about books, student privacy, chosen names, Safe2Tell, or Haberer’s performance. They can. They should. Public institutions are supposed to survive disagreement.
The issue is whether a school board can steer the largest district leadership rupture in years through vague agenda language, closed sessions, and after-the-fact messaging while its defenders point at progressives and hope nobody keeps reading the board packet.
The culture-war fight is the distraction.
The transparency failure is the story.
Source Notes
- The Gazette letter page, May 19, 2026: source for Sawvel’s published letter.
- The Gazette, “Academy D-20 to part ways with superintendent”: public reporting on Haberer and the board’s stated no-confidence action.
- ASD20 public meeting portal: official route for board agendas and meeting records.
- Dr. Bill Sawvel’s Dissertation Reveals the Playbook Behind His Book Bans: existing D20 Accountability Project Sawvel, Take Back Our Schools, and d20books analysis.
- Brad Miller’s Open Meetings Advice Cost Woodland Park School District Nearly $150,000: existing D20 Accountability Project Brad Miller transparency-risk context.
- Colorado HB24-1039: public source for Colorado chosen-name school-policy requirements.