Denver School Board member Auon’tai “Tay” Anderson is scrambling for political cover to explain to his radically progressive base why he reversed course and allowed police back in schools to protect students from shooters.
The mayor made him do it, said Anderson, peddling a weak-kneed excuse while sporting a Malcom X rebranding makeover.
The problem for “Malcom Tai” is his school district staff, Denver Mayor Hancock’s staff, and the world’s own lying eyes saw that’s just not true.
From the Denver Post:
During a news conference Monday, Anderson said Superintendent Alex Marrero told him and board President Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán last week that the decision to station police in schools “would happen without the board’s approval” and that Hancock already had drafted an executive order to declare a public health emergency to make it happen.
“The decision that you saw was one responding to the moment, but also preserving the institution of the school board,” Anderson said of the board’s unanimous vote on Thursday. “We cannot be a school district where the mayor of Denver is signing executive orders to overhaul our duly elected school board.”
And yet, what we saw during last week’s press conference following the tragic shooting at East High School, was the superintendent claiming to have made the decision on his own to bring back police protection and telling us he asked Hancock for help funding the effort.
Anderson is repeating what happened, but adding his own sinister spin from an alternative universe where a piece of paper signed by any city official anywhere trumps a decision by the duly elected Denver Public Schools Board.
To put it politely, Malcom Tai is lying when he claims he was bullied into a decision that is not playing well with his supporters who rallied and protested mightily to defund police following the murder of George Floyd.
From the Denver Gazette:
“There’s no truth to Director Anderson’s claim,” said Mike Strott, the mayor’s spokesperson.
“The decision to return SROs to high schools was Superintendent Marrero’s decision alone, which the mayor encouraged and supports, because it’s the right decision,” Strott added.
Back at Denver Public School District, The Gazette reports:
Meanwhile, the DPS, as a body, distanced itself from Anderson’s allegations. In a statement, a spokesperson for the board said only the DPS president represents and speaks for the board.
And Gaytán, the board president, has “not delegated this authority to any other board director,” the spokesperson said in a statement, adding, “Individual directors of the DPS Board of Education have a right to free speech and when they engage with the public, they are speaking for themselves and do not represent the views of the entire body.”
Luckily for Anderson, the Denver Post covered for him by hiding the other side of the story behind a subscriber only story, with this wildly one-sided headline:
Anderson needs all the help he can get from the metro media after Denver mayoral candidate Andy Rougeot this week called for the resignation of the embattled school board vice president.
“Denver Public School Board Vice President Tay Anderson led the dangerous charge to remove SRO’s from our schools and he should resign immediately for jeopardizing the safety of our schools and placing our children in harm’s way,” Rougeot said in a press release.
“It’s time for the Denver Public School Board to be led by responsible adults and parents from the community, not politicians more concerned with scoring dangerous political points than they are about our kids,” Rougeot said.
Rougeot has added to his tough-on-crime platform by pledging to fund security resource officers, and says students charged with shooting crimes, like murder, should be relocated to remote learning sites.
NEW: Denver School Board @DirectorTay says students who make mistakes shouldn’t be removed from in-person learning. Even if the student is charged with shooting someone, as long as the shooting is off school grounds. #copolitics pic.twitter.com/7bCCW9Wz4Q
— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) March 28, 2023
Shooting someone with a gun is not a “mistake,” it’s a crime.
But if progressives are going to give a pass on prosecuting teenagers who go around shooting people, the very least they can do is keep them out of our schools.
Will Anderson’s belief that shooters should be allowed on campus, but police protection is out of the question, sit well with voters?
We’ll find out in the November school board election.