Denver Public Schools is scrambling to figure out what’s next after newly appointed board member MiDian Holmes stepped down amid decade-old child abuse charges that surfaced.
A 5 p.m. Friday meeting was scheduled to discuss the controversy but then was canceled Friday morning. Instead, a previously scheduled Monday board meeting and work session will take its place.
In an e-mail, DPS spokesman Will Jones said the board has 60 days to fill a board vacancy, and that limit closes Monday.
“After that time, under the law, the responsibility for filling the vacancy goes to the board president,” Jones said.
Members of six Denver Public Schools employee associations criticized the board for a lack of transparency during this incident.
“The six members of the school board who appointed Holmes should feel responsible for the damage that has been done to Holmes’ reputation,” said a Denver Classroom Teachers Association news release. “We can all empathize with the struggles of a working mother, and the circumstances of her past should have been presented up front and not discovered through a media investigation.”
Holmes Thursday night after reports surfaced of her , which included child abuse charges. She was appointed Tuesday as the board director for northeast Denver in a to replace Landri Taylor, who resigned in February. Holmes, 35, was picked out of 20 applicants.
Holmes said she relinquished her position after controversy about child abuse charges overshadowed her appointment.
“When I ran for the school board appointment, my intentions were pure,” Holmes wrote on her “I did so not thinking that my past would be the focus. … I did so with my eyes and ambition on the future. The reality is clear that my past has the media and several members of the community mystified and I would be doing a great disservice to the 90,000 students of Denver Public Schools if I continued to allow this to be a distraction.”
A report Wednesday by unveiled 2005 and 2006 child abuse related criminal charges.
When Holmes, a single mother of three, explained the charges to The Denver Post, she said they stemmed from a 2005 incident in which she hadn’t noticed her 2-year-old daughter wandering outside during a busy morning getting ready for work.
In a statement, the school district said Holmes disclosed this story to them prior to her appointment and that they stood behind her.
Court documents uncovered by , a nonprofit news organization covering education issues, told a different tale, detailing an additional 2006 child abuse charge in which Holmes left her three kids — ranging from age 2 to 7 — home alone for more than eight hours while she went to work.
Holmes pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child abuse and was sentenced to probation.
DPS president Anne Rowe said in a statement that while the board does not condone some of Holmes’ decisions, they believe her past hardships influenced her to positively impact District 4.
Holmes hinted that she may pursue the board position again in 2017, writing: “Those that have offered me support through this process … shall we meet, again, in 2017? *wink, wink* … I want you to understand and know that this has been a gesture of strength, and while it may seem like those that have caused these distractions won, they haven’t and I will never let them.”
Elizabeth Hernandez: 303-954-1223, ehernandez@ denverpost.com or @ehernandez
