The ‘ Board of Education announced no changes in Superintendent Alex Marrero’s employment with the district on Monday, despite meeting for nearly four hours to discuss his contract and performance.
The board spent most of the morning behind closed doors talking separately with an outside attorney and Marrero. Directors met for just 15 minutes when they reconvened in public, during which they barely spoke about the conflict between themselves and the superintendent.
Instead, board members discussed the possibility of further working through their concerns with the district’s governance model — which is at the crux of the tension between Marrero and the board — during a retreat next month.
“Building the relationship between the board and superintendent, I’m fully committed to that,” said director Marlene De La Rosa, one of the few board members to address the issue directly.
The board did not address Marrero’s employment during the meeting, but President Xóchitl Gaytán said in an interview that “nothing has changed” with the superintendency.
The board called the meeting after Marrero sent a letter to Gaytán in June, complaining that members are overstepping their authority when it comes to DPS’s day-to-day operations.
“Thank you for organizing this meeting,” Marrero told the board at the end of Monday’s meeting “I know historically we have been on sabbatical. I appreciate the conversation.”
Board members are struggling to work together as well as with Marrero, whose commitment to DPS they are now questioning after he applied for a job in Miami and was a finalist for a separate position in Chicago last year. Marrero failed to get either of the jobs.
The district’s governance model — called policy governance — is at the crux of the conflict between board members and the superintendent. Under policy governance, directors are supposed to set goals they want DPS to reach rather than issue directives to the superintendent.
Marrero believes that under policy governance the actual running of the district is under his purview — not the board’s — and that directors overstep by wanting to get involved in school operations and student literacy, according to his June letter.
Board members, such as Monica Hunter, have called the districtap implementation of policy governance “extreme” — and one that has turned the board into a policymaking body when they should be more active.
In his June letter, Marrero said the board violated his contract by not following policy governance.
If directors decide they no longer want to use the governance model, Marrero’s contract allows him to end his employment with the district. The superintendent has to give the board a 30-day notice before resigning, which raised questions about whether he intended to place the school board on alert with his email last month.
“Policy governance can feel very daunting and confusing to the public,” said director Amy Klein Molk during the public portion of the meeting. “It’s really important that, regardless where this goes, we come to a place where there’s real transparency and trust in the system and, maybe, that it just be more approachable to the people.”
Gaytán said during the meeting that she knows she can come off as “harsh” when implementing policy governance and that she’s open to changing how the board operates.
“There’s no grey in-between and I take it very literally when I look at the words on the paper,” she said.
Board member Kimberlee Sia also asked that the board start doing a self-assessment during work sessions.
Hunter did not speak when the board reconvened in public after the closed session. Directors John Youngquist and Donald “D.J.” Torres left the virtual meeting before it ended.
Marrero has previously accused board members of not speaking to each other and canceling meetings because they don’t like the other director.
The fractures in board members’ relationships with each other and the superintendent appeared as soon as the meeting began just after 9 a.m.
Marrero said he was concerned that Youngquist — who he historically doesn’t get along with — would record and leak the meeting when directors moved to go into the closed-door session.
“This puts the board in tremendous peril,” the superintendent said.
Marrero’s comments spurred a back-and-forth between board members about why they were meeting virtually for such a crucial meeting. Four directors were doing so from separate rooms at the Denver School of the Arts, while three others — Youngquist, Hunter and Torres — were on video via other locations.
Hunter pushed back when her colleagues questioned why the three weren’t at the school, saying that the board is supposed to be on its annual July sabbatical and that such comments are “rooted in ableism.”
“I apologize on behalf of the whole board that we are not here in person,” Gaytán said before she was interrupted by Torres.
“You are the president,” he said. “You do not speak on my behalf.”
