Just when it looked like the Denver school board’s image had hit rock bottom, the newly released video of their closed-door meeting on the heels of the March shooting shows just how conniving, manipulate and self-serving they truly are.
And that’s according to the wildly progressive Denver Post, which says the teachers’ union-endorsed board was centered on saving their own personal image during the wave of intense public criticism than protecting children.
And the Denver Public School board members, Superintendent Alex Marrero and legal counsel Aaron Thompson, certainly were not shown in their best lights. The meeting makes everyone involved look conniving and political. During a crisis – especially a school shooting that left two employees seriously injured and resulted in a student’s suicide – we’d expect these school leaders to rise to the occasion. Instead, these men and women convened in secret to plot how best to quell the growing public backlash.
After listening to this meeting, we now understand the “Resign DPS” signs that have been popping up in yards across the city and in hashtags on social media. This is not a board serving the public or even taking school safety seriously. The members engaged in an egregious abdication of their responsibilities as elected officials.
The criticism comes as board member Charmaine Lindsay announced she will run for reelection to the seat serving northwest Denver, reports Chalkbeat Denver.
Lindsay was appointed to the board a year ago to fill a vacancy with the support of fellow board buddies Auon’tai “Tay” Anderson, Scott Esserman and Michelle Quattlebaum.
Representing District 1, Scott Baldermann is also running for reelection, while Anderson is throwing in the towel and instead running for a seat in Colorado’s Democrat controlled state legislature. Cringe.
It doesn’t appear like the school board or their very expensive superintendent is getting the message to #ResignDPS.
On a final note, we noticed some media outlets (Denver Post) who initially asked for the video of the illegal closed-door meeting to be released through a Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) request, posted the story and released video behind subscriber paywalls.
We would remind the media that when using CORA to request documents and recordings be released to the public through the media at no cost to them, they should probably not be charging the public to see that information they were provided for free.