ongoing leadership investigation is targeting nearly $3 million in contracts that former Superintendent Christopher Smith and his wife signed with an education company and examining whether the couple was influenced by paid international travel.
School board President Anne Egan confirmed the investigation is centered on the Smiths’ ties to after The Denver Post obtained letters and copies of five contracts between the district and the firm, including three signed by the superintendent and Brenda Smith, the district’s human resources officer.
The documents and Egan’s statement reveal the first details behind the Board of Education’s decision to freeze new contracts and subsequently change the threshold needed for board approval after Christopher Smith unexpectedly resigned in late January, and why Cherry Creek placed Brenda Smith on paid administrative leave days later.
“We are also looking into allegations of excessive travel expenses billed to the district by Education Accelerated,” Egan said in a statement. “When those types of issues were brought to our attention, the board moved to freeze certain contracts and travel until we could investigate them fully.”
The investigation, she said this week, remains ongoing.
Cherry Creek Schools terminated all contracts with Education Accelerated in February because of what staff called “substantial concerns” with the company’s performance, according to two letters district officials sent that month to notify the firm of their decision.
Those concerns range from incomplete work to the possibility that Education Accelerated — hired to create a teacher residency program — overbilled the district as much as $57,520.97 for travel expenses, the documents show.
The school board is also concerned about the relationship between the Smiths and David Palumbo, the founder and chairman of Education Accelerated, Egan said.
“That relationship may have included international travel taken by the Smiths during the contracting process,” she said.
Tony Leffert, an attorney representing Christopher and Brenda Smith, said all of the contracts and payments made to Education Accelerated were approved by the school board.
“I don’t believe any one of them did anything improper,” he said of the Smiths. “…My understanding is that the board approved the expenditures for that contract and the spending, and other staff were aware of these payments.”
Egan acknowledged that the school board approved “certain Education Accelerated contracts presented to us by Superintendent Chris Smith,” but had no knowledge of the Smiths’ personal relationship with the company’s founder. Records show the board approved at least two Education Accelerated contracts during public meetings in 2024.
Those contracts were part of the meetings’ consent agenda, which school boards typically vote on at the recommendation of staff and often without discussion. Agendas for the meetings showed Brenda Smith was the district staffer responsible for the contracts.
Superintendent goes to Brazil
Cherry Creek had at least five contracts with Education Accelerated, the values of which ranged from $41,800 to $2.6 million. The district had paid Education Accelerated nearly $2 million as of Jan. 29, documents show.
The company, which appears to be based in Austin, Texas, was hired by the district in 2023 and helped Cherry Creek launch its Aspiring Educator Pathway Program the following year.
That program aims to help solve the teacher shortage by training future educators in Cherry Creek schools while they earn bachelor’s degrees from the The approved the program during its most recent meeting in March.
Education Accelerated CEO Alicia Densford said in a statement to The Post that the company remains “committed to working cooperatively with the district.”
“It is a program that was approved by the school board and has been highly successful,” she said. “We remain confident in the integrity of the work and look forward to continuing to work collaboratively with the district to address any questions and ensure the program’s ongoing success.”
Densford did not acknowledge in her statement that the company’s contracts with Cherry Creek Schools had been canceled.
It’s unclear how much international travel the district is examining, but Christopher Smith did fly to Brazil in April 2024 while he was superintendent for a two-day conference called Think Tank 2.0 hosted by . That trip was not paid for by Cherry Creek Schools.
The Brazilian school’s superintendent at the time — Richard Boerner, an associate of Palumbo’s who now works for Education Accelerated — invited Smith to participate in the event. He told him the Cherry Creek leader that the school could pay for his hotel and flight, including if he decided to extend his stay through the weekend to “enjoy São Paulo,” according to an email reviewed by The Post.
Christopher Smith went on the trip and “the sponsors” paid for his hotel expenses, including when he stayed an extra night, Leffert said. “They paid for everybody,” he said. “There’s a whole conference of people.”
It’s not clear whether Brenda Smith also went on the trip to Brazil.
Palumbo, the co-founder and chairman of Education Accelerated, served as a facilitator of the event, the email showed. Boerner became the chief innovation officer for Education Accelerated in December 2024 and chief executive officer of , another company that has worked with Cherry Creek Schools, in 2025, according to his LinkedIn page.
“It was standard practice to invite external participants and cover certain related expenses,” Boerner said in a statement. “I’m not in a position to speak to or confirm the specific arrangements for any individual attendees as I no longer work there.”
He said TruFit Talent is “unrelated to these events” when asked by The Post about the Brazil conference.
Palumbo, who could not be reached for comment, is also chairman of TruFit Talent, according to the company’s website.
The school board knew about Christopher Smith’s trip to São Paulo, Leffert said.
“Everybody on the board knows that situation,” he said. “…The board knew about it and they approved it.”
Leffert declined to provide evidence that board members knew about the trip.
Egan pushed back on the attorney’s assertion, saying Christopher Smith did not share his calendar with the board, and trips such as the one to São Paulo aren’t something directors vote on.
“The school board had absolutely no knowledge of that trip,” she said.
Contract concerns
Christopher and Brenda Smith, who were married before either worked at Cherry Creek Schools, signed off on the largest Education Accelerated contracts. The rest were signed by Chief Financial Officer Scott Smith (no relation).
The district hired Brenda Smith as chief human resources officer in 2019. After the school board hired Christopher Smith as superintendent in 2021, Brenda Smith began reporting to a deputy superintendent to comply with the districtap staff conduct policy, which states that employees may not engage in direct or indirect supervisory relationships with immediate family members, according to a 2022 district memo.
Brenda Smith signed an Education Accelerated contract worth at least $368,000 on June 11, 2024, less than two months after her husband’s trip to Brazil. Christopher Smith then approved the largest Education Accelerated contract — worth $2.6 million over several years — in October 2024, the documents showed.
Overall, the district would have spent more than $3 million of taxpayer money on all of the Education Accelerated contracts — excluding travel expenses — if they had not been terminated last month, documents show.
But itap not just the Brazil conference that has raised red flags with Cherry Creek officials.
Education Accelerated sent Brenda Smith invoices that showed the company routinely exceeded the $5,000 limit set in the contracts for travel expenses. For example, the firm billed Cherry Creek Schools for more than $33,779.07 in July 2024 for travel.
The travel expenses incurred by Education Accelerated staff were supposed to be pre-approved by Cherry Creek, according to the contract’s terms.
Leffert, the Smiths’ attorney, said contract terms can change, including if more travel is needed than necessary. “It doesn’t mean it wasn’t approved by the school board,” he said.
The company also sent Brenda Smith an invoice dated March 31, 2024, that requested the district reimburse the company for travel expenses it said were incurred in April, the following month. The bill totaled $3,156.13 to cover airfare, meals, hotels and other expenses for Palumbo and Densford to come to metro Denver, according to the invoice.
But Education Accelerated sent another bill — this time totaling $7,176.72 — to Brenda Smith on May 31, 2024, for what it said were also travel expenses incurred in April. It wasn’t clear from the document whether the expenses were in addition to the March 31 invoice that billed Cherry Creek for April travel.
The travel invoices contained inconsistencies, such as expenses for travel outside of Colorado, which led the district to cancel the contracts and ask Education Accelerated to provide documentation and records to substantiate charges and services, according to a Feb. 24 letter obtained by The Post.
Education Accelerated billed Cherry Creek $405.12 for Palumbo to rent a car in Virginia Beach in June 2024. The company also billed the district $5,613.09 for a hotel in San Francisco that same month, as well as $1,803.71 for another car rental in Virginia, invoices show.
“The district has not located documentation clearly authorizing or approving work performed in these jurisdictions,” general counsel Sonja McKenzie and Smith, the chief financial officer, wrote in the Feb. 24 letter. “Absent such documentation, the associated costs are presumptively unauthorized.”
They asked Education Accelerated to provide the district with itemized invoices and receipts, including for meals, entertainment, hotels, Airbnb stays and rental cars by March 4, according to the letter. It’s not clear whether Education Accelerated responded by that deadline.
“We are happy to work with the district as they evaluate the program and our work,” Densford said in her statement. “All invoices submitted were proper and consistent with the terms of the program as approved by board resolution, and we have provided the district with extensive documentation supporting the same.”
Education Accelerated also sent a $20,000 invoice for work TruFit Talent did related to the aspiring educator program in December 2024, documents showed.
But Boerner said TruFit Talent did not receive compensation from the district.
The termination of Education Accelerated’s contract applies to TruFit Talent as well as all third-party contractors s working on behalf of the company, according to Cherry Creek’s Feb. 12 letter.
School board’s changes to contract processes
It’s not unusual for a superintendent or human resources director to approve contracts for services, said Denver Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Chuck Carpenter. Such agreements can make it to their desks if they reach a certain cost threshold or, in the case of a human resources director, pertain to their department.
For example, Denver Public Schools has a policy that states the superintendent approves contracts worth more than $500,000 and the school board approves contracts above $1 million.
“We’re dealing with public money, so it’s important that folks can defend the purchases as being in the best interest of kids,” Carpenter said.
Cherry Creek, the state’s fourth-largest K-12 school district, enrolls 51,844 students and operates under a $840 million budget.
It’s common for contracts to set a limit, such as $5,000, for travel expenses, but vendors should notify districts if they plan to go over either the travel budget or the amount of the contract, Carpenter said.
A vendor should not bill a district more than the limit agreed upon in the contract, and in a scenario where a vendor believes they are going to go over budget, DPS reopens the district’s contract approval process, he said.
“Going over that amount is essentially a contract, too,” he said. “It’s not OK to go over without having that reapproval process.”
Vendors don’t typically overspend on travel expenses because, in most cases, those costs are overestimated to prevent such a scenario, Carpenter said.
Both of the contracts signed by the Smiths after the Brazil trip were large enough that they also had to be approved by the school board.
In February, the board approved what Egan called “reforms” to Cherry Creek Schools’ procurement and expenditure approval policies and contracts. Interim Superintendent Jennifer Perry also announced plans for an external audit to review the district’s organizational systems, including internal controls and fiscal responsibilities.
At the time, Egan said the district’s decision to review policies and freeze travel and contracts was “a result of concerns being raised about the decisions and actions of former Superintendent Smith and Brenda Smith,” but she didn’t provide specifics.
The changes implemented by the board in February included lowering the threshold — from $400,000 to $250,001 — required for district staff to seek school board approval before agreeing to a contract for goods or services. (The threshold had previously been raised after the Cherry Creek Schools passed a nearly $1 billion bond in 2024.)
Under the changes, employees are also required to get approval for purchases above $5,000. Who within the district — executive director, deputy chief of operations or another administrator — approves a purchase depends on the amount.
Now, the legal department also has to review and approve all contracts, and an employee’s failure to get approval can result in disciplinary action, including termination.
