Alex Marrero clearly wants to leave Colorado.
The superintendent for Denver Public Schools was a finalist this month for the top job with the Miami-Dade County Public Schools system. In 2025, his name was released as a finalist for the superintendent role with Chicago Public Schools.
We would say good riddance to a man who is dissatisfied with a salary of $346,529 a year, a bonus of $17,326 in 2025, and a leader who needs his own mentor at a cost of about $35,000 a year to do his job better. On top of all that, Marrero is billing the district for domestic and international travel to education conferences to the tune of $37,433 over two years.
But the board of education should not fire Marrero without cause. Denver taxpayers have invested too much money into his professional development to allow him to walk away with 12 months’ salary.
Marrero needs to fulfill his responsibilities and do the job we are paying him to do until his contract expires in 2028. He needs dial back his travel — stop flying to Helsinki and Japan for conferences — and instead spend more time focusing on Denver’s many challenges – a drop in student population due to low birth rates, a historic effort to redraw school attendance zones to end or at least reduce segregation, and the still unacceptable rates of literacy before 3rd grade in more than a dozen schools.
Given declining state payments due to fewer students, Denver Public Schools cannot afford to support two highly paid executives at the same time. We fear paying out one contract while looking for a replacement will hinder the board’s ability to offer a competitive compensation package if the perfect candidate comes along. Marrero needs to finish out his contract or leave of his own accord.
In a bizarre public statement, Marrero blamed not getting the Miami-Dade job on politics.
Marrero said he applied for the job and refused to “sanitize” his work to support Black and Latino students, LGBTQ+ communities, students arriving while their families were seeking asylum, immigrant families, and multilingual education.
“I recognize that these values may not align with the increasingly conservative ideology shaping public education in certain parts of this nation,” Marrero wrote. “If that made me less attractive to Miami-Dade, I can live with that. Although I feel for historically underserved communities.”
The Miami-Dade school board is indeed politically polarized – despite its nonpartisan elections — split between five conservatives and four liberal members, but we don’t see why Denver should care about the politics in Florida affecting the job prospects of our superintendent.
Marrero should have explained to the public why he applied in the first place, because it feels like a slap in the face.
Marrero also needs to look in the mirror. Perhaps the problem in Florida wasn’t the board. Here in Denver, Marrero enjoys a board of education that is decidedly liberal but split between factions with varying degrees of support for charter schools and teachers’ unions. Yet, Marrero is constantly at odds with the board. He’s clearly a part of the problem, and we hope he does better for Denver in the next two years.
Despite everything, Denver Public Schools have thrived under Marrero’s tenure, in large part due to dedicated principals, teachers and staff who work tirelessly every day without complaint and for far less pay than Marrero. We know Denver schools will persevere under another two years of Marrero’s tenure.
Also, under no circumstances should the board renew his contract when it expires. We can find a superintendent who doesn’t cost us a fortune, doesn’t require a paid mentor, spends his working hours in Denver and doesn’t have one foot out the door.
If Marrero walks away with a year’s severance after having applied for two jobs in two years, voters can take matters into their own hands and oust the board members who hastily approved his sweetheart contract renewal.
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