The Denver school board is back to business putting politics and childish bickering over the safety of students less than a week after the latest shooting at East High School.
The power players of the week are none other than Auon’tai “Tay” Anderson and Xóchitl Gaytán, who are squabbling over silly rules that amounts to a hill of beans compared to the deaths of two East High School students this year.
The Gazette can barely keep up with the he said, she said games going back and forth between those two, the mayor’s office, and Denver police.
In a nutshell, here’s the game Anderson is playing to keep voters distracted from the fact he led the effort to get rid of school resource officers in 2020, and then voted to reinstate said officers after last week’s shooting against the wishes of his “defund police” supporters.
- The school superintendent declared he was reinstating the officers to help protect schools and would get permission later from the board. The mayor and police chief indicated they would support them.
- The board voted to reinstate officers; Tay stood silent at the board’s press conference explaining their decision.
- Tay held his own press conference and went on a whirlwind media tour accusing the mayor of an insurrection to force police down their throats by issuing an executive order.
- Gaytán issued a ridiculous memo to Anderson that he immediately leaked claiming it was proof the mayor was planning an insurrection because it uses the phrase “executive order.”
But we already knew the mayor was planning to fund the school resource officers for the school district, which would require an executive order.
There is still not one shred of proof the city was planning some sort of school invasion of resource officers to protect students against the will of the school board.
All we know is what the mayor originally said, he was willing to help.
Denver City Attorney Kerry Tipper said in a statement to the Denver Gazette Wednesday that no executive order forcing school resource officers into DPS schools had been discussed, nor would the mayor issue such an emergency declaration.
“To the contrary, DPS approached Chief Thomas and the Mayor about our capacity to reinstate SROs and we scrambled to accommodate the request as much as possible,” Tipper said.
And now that everyone is caught up on the bullshit that Xóchitl Gaytán and Tay Anderson are wasting our time with, can we please get back to addressing the real issue of student safety?
Crime is not being addressed in city schools as multiple news media are now reporting, and board members are too busy fighting with each other to do their jobs.
Also, school board members including Anderson are up for reelection this year. We should probably start focusing on that as well.
No one forced Anderson’s vote, and in the end, that singular vote had zero impact on whether school resource officers would be permitted on campus.