The Denver school board censured director Monica Hunter on Thursday night, the third time in five years that the governing body of Colorado’s largest K-12 district has publicly reprimanded a colleague.
The 4-2 vote came after an outside investigator was unable to independently verify allegations that Hunter made antisemitic comments about a Jewish colleague. The , released before Thursday’s meeting of Board of Education, concluded that many of the accusations “boil down to a ‘she said, she said, he said'” situation.
Board President Xóchitl Gaytán previously accused Hunter of calling director Amy Klein Molk a “Zionist bitch” and of violating numerous other board policies.
“This has been a really hard thing to go through,” Klein Molk said before the censure vote. “…I find it deeply offensive that my religion and my geopolitical beliefs should ever be questioned because of my Jewish identity. We have Jewish students and educators who are truly living in fear right now.”
Klein Molk previously said in a statement to the board that she was informed of the comments and recounted a disagreement she had with Hunter when Klein Molk informed her colleague that she was Jewish and believed in Israeli statehood.
Hunter, the board’s vice president, has denied the allegations against her, saying that she believes her board colleagues and district staffers were retaliating against her for trying to hold Superintendent Alex Marrero accountable.
“The allegations are simply not true,” Hunter said during Thursday’s meeting. “Why did these accusations emerge when I was pushing for conversations about accountability?”
Gaytán said she had apologized to Klein Molk for “not prioritizing the accountability” that needed to be taken for Hunter’s alleged comments.
“When I heard about the derogatory comments that were made by Vice President Hunter, I was shocked,” she said. “… I do believe the remarks were serious and egregious.”
Allegations against Hunter
The investigation findings were released just hours before Thursday’s meeting.
During the meeting, former U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, an attorney representing the school board, expressed frustration with how long board members had prolonged the potential censure vote. The investigation, he said, confirmed that everyone interviewed stands by the statements they had made.
“Now it is going to be up to you all to make a decision that has been hanging around this board’s agenda for the last month and a half or so,” he told directors. “Ultimately you have to make a decision.”
The firmest evidence backing the claims by the DPS officials who accused Hunter of making antisemitic remarks came from notes taken by Marrero regarding a meeting the pair held in January, according to the report prepared by Denise Maes of Maes Solutions LLC.
As a result, the investigation left it to the school board to determine whether to believe the officials who have made the allegations — Gaytán and Marrero — or Hunter, who has denied making the comments.
Gaytán accused Hunter and Torres of not fulfilling their duties as elected board members and of violating numerous board policies. Torres, who also had faced a censure vote, resigned unexpectedly last week — a decision he said he made because of the board’s infighting.
The allegation that Hunter made antisemitic remarks was the most serious accusation against the director, but Gaytán and other district leaders also expressed concerns that Hunter’s job with the state’s largest teachers union carries potential conflicts of interest when she takes certain votes as a board member — allegations that Hunter has denied.
The board members who voted to censure Hunter included Gaytán, Klein Molk, Marlene De La Rosa and Kimberlee Sia. Hunter and board member John Youngquist voted against the decision.
Youngquist said that if Hunter used antisemitic language, it would be a “heinous and offensive act.” But, he said, “there is nothing conclusive related to this accusation in this report.”
A censure is the most severe step a school board can take to reprimand a director. The board does not have the ability to remove a member from office.
Sia and De La Rosa said the totality of the allegations against Hunter — not just the accusations of antisemitism — influenced their decision to censure their colleague.
“The cumulative effect of these concerns have affected the credibility and public trust of this board, and by extension, the district we represent,” De La Rosa said.
Investigation findings
For the most part, the report does not provide new details about the allegations.
But Maes did include details of her interview with Hunter, which appear to show the director disagrees with Klein Molk’s views. It’s unclear whether it’s because she’s Jewish or because she believes in Zionism.
” … While I don’t agree with it, I’ve been very supportive of (Klein Molk),” Hunter told Maes, according to the report.
“I don’t mean faith, but like she calls it her faith,” Hunter said when asked to clarify her disagreement with Klein Molk. “I don’t, I don’t know if it’s faith or not … I shouldn’t say faith. I know that is her belief, her political belief. That’s, you know, some people call (Zionism) political. Some see it as religion, and some see it as race.”
Zionism is the belief that Jewish statehood belongs in Israel. The Anti-Defamation League Mountain States has said that if Hunter did make the comments she is accused of, the language is antisemitic because “it appears to target, vilify or punish an individual because of a perceived connection to Israel.”
Hunter told Maes that she does not support Israel’s war in Gaza and the treatment of Palestinians after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
“I never will support antisemitism,” Hunter said on Thursday. “I have never blamed Jewish people responsible for what is happening in Palestine.”
In a statement Marrero previously provided to the board, the superintendent said he had a conversation with Hunter in which she referred to Klein Molk as a “Zionist bitch.”
Marrero took notes during that January conversation, which support his allegation, Maes wrote. His notes also showed that after the meeting with Hunter, Marrero told Gaytán about what was said.
Maes wrote in the report that because of the short timeframe she was given to interview witnesses, she was unable to speak to anyone except Hunter, Gaytán, Marrero and Klein Molk in her investigation.
The Board of Education, citing costs, gave Maes just a week to investigate the allegations against Hunter, a notably short timeline given that previous inquiries into alleged misbehavior by DPS directors have taken months. Gaytán previously said the short timeframe was the result of the cost of the investigation.
The investigation into Hunter was the third time in the past five years that a DPS board hired an outside law firm to investigate a colleague.
Last year outside attorneys spent months investigating allegations that director John Youngquist mistreated employees of color. That investigation cost DPS more than $78,000 and ended with the board censuring Youngquist.
