Accidents have been happening in the parking lots of Rampart High School in Colorado Springs, CO for years.  The ASD20 administration has records of all such incidents, including when police reports were made.  As citizens living or working in the district, we have the right to request documentation of these incidents through the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA).  In order to help prevent future accidents in school parking lots, it is imperative that we keep an open dialogue between the ASD20 administration and the community on past accidents. 

On November 6, 2018, my daughter, Alyssa, was trying to get to the Rampart High School entrance by walking across the overflow gravel parking lot when she was hit, dragged, and run over by another student driving a pickup truck.  She sustained severe injuries including compound fractures of the tibia and fibula, pelvic ring fractures (6 complete breaks with many more small fractures), and a Morel-Lavallee lesion on the thigh (a friction injury resulting in separation of subcutaneous tissue from the fascia).  Her pelvis and left leg are fixated with nearly 50 pieces of titanium.  She will suffer the physical and traumatic effects of this accident for the rest of her life with chronic aches and pains and PTSD.

The existing layout of the parking lots at Rampart HS and the lack of enforcement of the rules pertaining to the use of the lots helped make the accident possible.  The driver made an illegal left turn and was going way faster than the 5mph speed limit in the lot.  These actions could have been made impossible with a better design and implementation in place.  In February of 2021, I began to express my concerns to the district about the safety of the lots.  The district initially took my concerns to the City of Colorado Springs' Traffic and Transportation Engineering Department.  Their engineers told the district that there were not enough accidents to warrant a traffic study. In order to prove (beyond the evidence of my daughter's accident) that there have been multiple accidents and there is indeed the need to do a proper traffic study of the current layout of the parking lots and subsequent redesign, I requested documentation from D20, through the CORA act, of all other incidents over the last 10 years.  I was provided with incomplete documentation.  Personnel statements from my daughter's accident were missing.  There was no mention of another accident my daughter and I witnessed in April 2019 and reported to campus security, nor any information about another accident which made it into the local news on February 14, 2020.  A further request was made for them to supply any missing documentation. The district's legal counsel told me that their client had been advised to submit any more relevant documentation that they have on file, and yet no further documentation has been provided.  They also cited a post 9/11 provision, Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24-72-204 (2)(a)(VIII)(A), as reason to withhold any further information.  This has no relevance to giving the public information on parking lot incidents as the divulgence of such information does not include "security arrangements or investigations" used to prevent terrorist attacks.  There was clearly enough evidence of traffic-related safety  issues to convince the administration to hire an outside engineering firm to do a traffic study of Rampart HS, despite the City's refusal to validate a study.  A study by Sanderson Stewart is currently underway.

Not only do we, the public, have the right to access this information according to the Colorado Open Records Act, but the fact that the district is withholding this information sets a precedent of keeping us in the dark, making it harder for someone to prove that changes may need to be made at any other school in the district.  The entire community is affected by the poor design of school parking lots.  Poor traffic flow in the lots turns into traffic jams outside of the schools resulting in frustrated drivers and more accidents. 

Therefore, I need the support of my fellow ASD20 community members (those who live within the D20 boundary or who work at or send a student to a D20 school) to ensure that we are well-informed citizens who have our rights upheld under the law.

I, Laura Furia, began petitioning for this information in September of 2021, and the following is the exact wording of my original paper petition.

        Petition for Release of Information on Past Incidents

We, the undersigned, as concerned citizens, do petition the Academy District 20 of Colorado Springs, Colorado, under the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA), to release copies of any and all notes, documents, reports, investigations, meeting minutes, photographs, audio and video recordings, surveillance camera recordings; and any other documents and things created or received regarding incidents of injury or damage occurring in the parking lot of Rampart High School in the last ten (10) years prior to Laura Furia's initial request dated May 12, 2021.

With respect to Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24–72–204(2)(a)(I), we recognize that the District may be in possession and control of certain law enforcement investigation reports and records. In order to obtain these records from the law enforcement agencies themselves, we insist you must release a list and description of these documents.

Laura Furia is the designated spokesperson and contact who will receive the requested information which will then be made available to interested members of the public upon request.