The race for a seat on the Denver school board features two former ’60s activists who say they have turned their energy toward education and an incumbent who was involved in the court order to end segregation of Denver schools.
At-large candidate John McBride, 58, was arrested in 1968 on second-degree arson charges for firebombing a Denver Catholic school that was full of students at the time, according to court records.
McBride, who was 18 and a student at the school, said Friday he was angry that the school had not lowered its flag after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death April 4, 1968.
The next morning, McBride set fire to a soda bottle full of gasoline and threw it through a window at Annunciation High School, where it landed in the girls’ bathroom and caused $500 in damage, according to court records and a newspaper report.
McBride and another young man pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of malicious mischief and were sentenced to six months of probation.
McBride says the experience changed his life and that he hopes to be judged on what he has accomplished as an adult.
McBride graduated from the school and says he was forgiven for what he had done.
The incident caused him to lose out on scholarships. He joined the military and went on to raise three children who are now in college.
McBride touts his work for former Gov. Roy Romer’s Communities for a Drug-Free Colorado and his years as director of former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb’s Commission on Youth. He has been endorsed by the teachers union and says he wants to generate more discussion with the community about school issues.
He is running on a campaign pledge to give more of a voice to teachers, parents and students and points to his work improving education in northeast Denver.
McBride, who says he passed out literature for the Black Panther Party, has had other minor scrapes with the law, including a shoplifting charge in 1989 that was resolved with a guilty plea and probation and an arrest warrant for an unpaid traffic ticket that he paid last week. The arson at the school was his worst moment, he said.
Montero was on board
One of McBride’s opponents in the race is Rita Montero, 56, who in 1974 was questioned by police about her ties to a group of Chicano student activists that was involved in two car explosions that killed six of its members.
Montero in June 1974 was detained by police after she was pulled over and an egg timer was found in the back seat of her car around the time of the explosions, which police described as unintentional detonations by radicals. Bomb squads were called in, and the highway was shut down. She was never arrested or charged with a crime.
Montero later was called before a grand jury along with others who were familiar with the group, but she refused to answer questions on the advice of her attorney. She denies she was ever involved in illegal activities with the group.
“If I had been involved in them, I wouldn’t be here today,” Montero said. “I knew them. I will not deny that. Many of us were friends. Charges were never filed. I was called before the grand jury because I knew them.”
Montero served on the school board from 1995 to 1999, helping to implement the district’s bilingual education program that moved students out of Spanish classes within three years.
“I’m very proud of all the work I have done,” Montero said. “A lot of these young families have never had an involvement in politics. They think it’s a bad thing. Every one of those groups led to where we are today, in a positive way. For the most part, it led to a better society today.”
Montero said she seeks more oversight of the administration and wants to cut wasteful spending and to better scrutinize the district’s reform plans.
Incumbent leads board
Theresa Peña, 45, is the third candidate in the race and is the incumbent and the school- board president.
Peña has her own place in Denver history as a Denver Public Schools student. She was among dozens of plaintiffs in a case that started in 1969 when several families sued DPS, accusing it of keeping minority children out of Park Hill schools, which were mostly white.
The case landed in the U.S. Supreme Court and became the landmark 1973 ruling Keyes vs. School District No. 1, Denver, which said schools must desegregate, even districts that had not been segregated by law.
That spawned a districtwide desegregation plan in 1974 that brought busing to Denver, which was in place until 1995, when U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch determined that vestiges of past discrimination by the Denver schools had been, as much as possible, eliminated.
Peña is running on a platform that seeks to maintain the status quo, keeping with the district reforms that have been put in place and not changing the current administration.
“When you are in a time of dramatic change that Denver is heading into, you have to have a continuity,” she said.
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com Librarian Barry Osborne contributed to this report.
