The teen first warned his fellow students at Evergreen High School that there was a shooter on campus, then he confronted the shooter on the street outside the high school. Silverstone was shot twice.

He spent a month in a Lakewood hospital fighting for his life and then recovering from the wounds that almost killed him. He was released from the hospital Tuesday in what his family called a miracle, and we call a blessing.

“Matthew has never given up. He can now speak. In fact, he is happy to tell you, ‘I’m still alive!’ He can walk with assistance,” his family said in a news release. “His friends will tell you his sense of humor is back. He has exceeded everyone’s expectations in his recovery.”

Silverstone was both brave and selfless on Sept. 10, and it sounds like he continues to shine through his recovery, giving everyone hope in these dark times.

Silverstone is not alone in his distinction as a true Colorado hero.

Another student who was shot at Evergreen High School last month confronted the shooter. At the age of 14, the victim’s family has understandably chosen to remain anonymous and keep out of the public eye. We wish to respect their privacy while also highlighting the incredible act.

Both students remind us of Kendrick Castillo, who was killed defending his classmates inside a Highlands Ranch school in 2019. Castillo was joined by other classmates — Brendan Bialy and Joshua Jones — as they lunged at a shooter, saving others. Bialy was not hurt, but Jones was shot twice.

We are torn between celebrating these incredible acts and crying for the state of our country. Mass shootings have been occurring in Colorado schools since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. How is it that students are still the ones confronting these assailants and not our trained adult professionals in law enforcement? Every school in this state needs an armed officer on campus at all times.

We should not be asking our kids to save themselves. More must be done to protect students who attend school hoping to grow and learn, and far too often in the past decade have found themselves trying to survive the horrors of mass shootings and the trauma that follows.

Nine minutes passed between when the shooting began inside Evergreen High School and when Silverstone was shot at the corner of Buffalo Park Road and Olive Road at the far end of the high school’s campus. Having an officer on the campus could have resulted in a different outcome.

Expressing gratitude to these kids for their acts of heroism is not enough. We can name a street for Silverstone (and should, just as we created Castillo Way). We can cry for their pain and suffering, and rejoice at their perseverance and determination.

But adults in Colorado must now act to ensure that no other child in this state is forced to fight an armed assailant for their lives and the lives of their friends and teachers.

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Updated 2:10 p.m. Oct. 17, 2025: Due to an editor’s error, this article previously misreported details about the shooting of Matthew Silverstone. 

We were dismayed to learn that security at Evergreen High School may not have been a priority because of the school’s location about an hour west of Denver in the forested foothills of Jefferson County.

Mental illness and radicalization can occur anywhere, especially in a society connected seamlessly online to every type of content imaginable.

Every school in this state needs a dedicated resource officer who can respond immediately to a threat on campus.

Seconds matter in a shooting, and two students from Evergreen High School are in the hospital fighting for their lives. Jefferson County Sheriff’s Deputies responded quickly to the shooting but even that was unable to prevent tragedy.

The evening before the shooting at Evergreen High School, the school’s principal told concerned parents that a school resource officer had been “deprioritized” for Jefferson County’s mountain schools. The school’s full-time deputy was on medical leave, and the contract with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office has a deputy on campus “as staffing allows.” At the time of the shooting, the officer assigned to the campus was responding to a call off campus.

Every Colorado school needs an armed officer on campus during school hours. We are glad the Jefferson County School District will increase security before students return, and a similar plan should be put in place at every school in the state.

School violence has struck a charter school in the suburban community of Highlands Ranch where a road is now named for the hero — Kendrick Castillo — who saved his classmates but died. A few miles north at Arapahoe County High School in Littleton, Claire Davis was shot and killed by one of her classmates. Two teachers were shot and injured in the middle of Denver at East High School, and another student was shot and killed in the school’s parking lot a few weeks earlier.

But small towns, rural communities and the mountains are not immune. In 2006, a gunman took students hostage at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, about a half-hour drive from Evergreen on twisting mountain roads. Emily Keyes was shot and killed.

We understand having law enforcement in every school in this state is a challenge financially and logistically, but in the face of yet another school shooting, we don’t see another option.

Americans can no longer be complacent. Our schools are not safe, and while locking down Evergreen quickly undoubtedly saved lives, we know that having a trained police officer on campus reduces the response time to seconds.

The teenager who shot two classmates and then killed himself last week had been active online in what experts describe as a new nihilism — the belief that life is meaningless — combined with a twisted desire to destroy society.

The teen’s social media accounts contained antisemitic and white supremacist posts and glorified other school shooters. According to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the teen had been “radicalized through an extremist network.”

The only response is to harden our schools and protect as many students as possible. Of course, statistically, it is still unlikely that a student will be harmed in an act of violence on campus. The riskiest part of a student����ap day is still apt to be their drive home.

But just as we require our children to ride in car seats, wear seatbelts and often buy them their first cars with airbags and other safety features, so too must we make schools as safe as possible.

We pray the victims of this shooting — 18-year-old Matthew Silverstone, and a second student who has not been identified at the behest of his family — survive and thrive.

And we pray that the next time someone targets our schools with violence that they are met by a show of force from law enforcement that protects innocent life.

No place is immune from school violence, a lesson we thought Colorado learned long ago when 12 students and a teacher were killed at Columbine High School.

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A Catholic church in Douglas County is petitioning to make Kendrick Castillo, the student killed in the 2019 STEM School Highlands Ranch shooting, a saint.

The confirmed that it is reviewing a petition from in Highlands Ranch to open a cause for Castillo’s canonization, according to an announcement this week.

“Although I have just begun to review the information submitted, it seems clear that Kendrick was an exceptional young man,” Colorado Springs Bishop James Golka said in a statement. “As we study and discern how to approach the massive undertaking of promoting a canonization cause, I ask all the faithful to keep Kendrick’s family in their prayers.”

Father Gregory Bierbaum and Father Patrick DiLoreto of St. Mark Parish collected testimony and interviews about Castillo to determine whether his life was “one of heroic virtue” — an initial step in the canonization process, according to , published by the Archdiocese of Denver.

Representatives of the Archdiocese of Denver and the Diocese of Colorado Springs both declined interviews for this story.

If Golka approves the petition, he will then send it to the Vatican, where the Pope will decide whether the candidate lived a life of “heroic virtue.” If they did, then the Pope would give them the title of “venerable.” Next, a miracle must be granted via prayers made to the person after their death, which the church sees as proof they are in heaven,

A second confirmed miracle is often needed for a person to achieve sainthood.

It can take several years for a person to be sainted, according to The Denver Catholic.

In 2016, the Denver Archdiocese began seeking sainthood for Julia Greeley, a formerly enslaved person. Her remains were exhumed from a grave in suburban Denver cemetery and placed at an altar at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception — one of the steps in the sainthood process.

The petition for Greeley was accepted by the Vatican, but is still being considered, according to The Denver Catholic.

Castillo, 18, was shot when he rushed one of the shooters in his classroom. Students have said his actions that day allowed his peers to take cover under their desks and escape.

Castillo was hailed a hero after the shooting and during his memorial service, Douglas County sheriff’s deputies led the procession to the church — an honor typically reserved for fallen officers.

“…Kendrick Castillo gave his life to stop a school shooting at STEM Highlands Ranch, thereby saving the lives of his classmates,” DiLoreto of St. Mark Parish said regarding the church’s petition. “He was a devote (sic) Catholic and wanted to introduce others around him to the Catholic faith and into (a) relationship with Jesus Christ.”

Castillo’s parents, John and Maria, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

The lawsuit was filed ahead of the second anniversary of student Austin Lyle’s shooting of East deans Wayne Mason and Eric Sinclair on March 23, 2023, at Denver’s largest high school.

Mason, who filed the lawsuit, was shot twice in the chest. Both men survived.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Denver District Court, also names as defendants East High School and assistant principal Shawne Anderson.

“Mr. Mason wants to ensure this never happens to anyone else,” attorney Dan Caplis, who is representing Mason, said in a statement. “This lawsuit will make everyone safer by getting the full truth to the public, and by holding the officials who undermined school safety fully accountable.”

Scott Pribble, a spokesman for , declined to comment on the litigation.

The lawsuit was filed under Colorado’s , which says schools can be held liable if they fail to provide “reasonable care” to protect students and employees from violence that is “reasonably foreseeable.”

The act is a little-used law, but has in recent years been invoked to test whether schools can be held liable not just for shootings, but also for bullying. The most high-profile case to be filed under the act is the lawsuit brought by the parents of Kendrick Castillo, who was killed during the 2019 shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch.

Mason’s lawsuit argues his injuries were preventable and that East administrators, including Anderson, did not have adequate training on how to search and pat down students.

officials previously acknowledged that Lyle had been “removed” from Overland High School during the 2021-22 academic year, but did not say why. The teen was on probation at the time of the East shooting for a 2021 charge of possessing a dangerous weapon and a large-capacity magazine.

Mason’s lawsuit reveals Lyle was expelled by Cherry Creek for trying to sell an AR-15 rifle and ammunition on school grounds at Overland.

Lyle transferred to East in January 2023 and, at that time, the school conducted a threat assessment on Lyle, creating a safety plan that required him to meet Anderson for a verbal “check-in” each morning before his first class, according to the complaint.

On March 2 of that year, students saw Lyle with a gun in class, according to the lawsuit. Lyle fled the school when administrators went to search him. Despite the incident, East administrators did not request Lyle be expelled and instead conducted a second threat assessment, according to the lawsuit.

The safety plan was altered after that second assessment and required Anderson to search Lyle every morning, according to the lawsuit.

DPS, East and Anderson “implemented inadequate policies and protocols regarding East High School building access screening,” which allowed students to enter the school without being searched despite it being a requirement in their safety plans, the lawsuit alleged.

DPS faced intense scrutiny for its discipline policies in the wake of the shooting, with parents and educators criticizing the district as being too lenient. DPS officials have said they have a “moral obligation” to teach all students.

On the day of the shooting, Mason was at the front desk when Lyle walked in and asked to speak with Anderson. Mason radioed for the assistant principal, who was at a school assembly and did not respond.

The lawsuit alleges Anderson “abandoned his duty” to search Lyle.

Another dean, Sinclair, took Lyle into an office to wait for Anderson, who still couldn’t be reached, according to the complaint.

Sinclair then called for Mason to help him. When Mason arrived in the room, the lawsuit said, Sinclair was “wrestling” with Lyle yelling, “Gun, gun!”

Lyle, who later died by suicide, shot Sinclair in the chest, abdomen and leg before shooting Mason and fleeing, according to the lawsuit.

“Five gun blasts pierced the air at East High School on that day,” the lawsuit said. “Two of those pistol pops fired at point-blank range entered Mr. Mason’s chest, dropping him to the floor. What began as a typical school day ended as a nightmare that could have been prevented.”

Anne Marie Hochhalter, a 17-year-old senior at Columbine when she was shot in the spine by two deranged classmates, died this week at 43 possibly from complications with the injuriesshe sustained that tragic day. She outlived 12 of her schoolmates and a teacher who died April 20, 1999. Austin Eubanks, who was shot twice, died at 37 following a long battle with an opioid addiction that was a result of the shooting. Both are survived by Richard Castaldo, Patrick Ireland and Sean Graves who also were severely wounded and have continued to honor the legacy of those who died at Columbine.

After Columbine, there was a mass movement for change. Hope was palpable that this would never happen again. Police reviewed mistakes they made in delaying their entry into the building. Laws were changed so that the shooters would not have been able to get their guns in Colorado legally. A hotline was established for students, parents and teachers to report threats, which has prevented some plotted attacks. And Coloradans united around the survivors and their families.

Columbine High School shooting survivor dies decades after tragedy. Her tenacious spirit is remembered.

But then the mass shootings continued – at schools, at concerts, at offices, and at parades. The pace began to pick up sometime in the last decade. Some shootings were orchestrated by foreign entities as terrorist attacks, but most were home-grown Americans slaughtering their friends, neighbors, and sometimes complete strangers with a bloodthirst that is unimaginable to anyone who hasn’t seen armed combat in war.

Also, this week, street signs on C-470 were finally updated to reflect the change of Lucent Boulevard to honor Kendrick Castillo. Kendrick was killed during the 2019 Highlands Ranch school shooting. He threw himself on one of the gunmen, saving the lives of his classmates, but suffering a fatal wound in the process. Now Kendrick Castillo Way reminds us all of a teenager who shouldn't have had to be a hero in his high school classroom but sacrificed himself to save others.

His parents visited his grave .

Sadly, these tragedies have divided the nation, and little hope remains that there will be an end to the violence.

Some survivors have dedicated their lives to preventing more ripples from forming, only to be accused of being un-American because of the politics and rights that envelop guns. In Colorado, Sen. Tom Sullivan’s son was killed in the Aurora Theater shooting. He sponsored a bill that passed the Colorado Senate that will make it harder for people to buy semi-automatic weapons with detachable magazines, like the one used to kill Sullivan’s son, Alex Sullivan, and 11 others at a midnight screening of Dark Knight Rises in 2012.

Perhaps instead of derision, Sullivan should be met with compassion as he seeks to protect others from gun violence.

Families who have lost their children at school shootings now support one another through an informal network, but part of the toll taken by these mass shootings has been the suicides that follow -- Anne Marie Hochhalter’s mother shot herself just as the family was moving into a new house that would be accessible for Anne Marie, Jeremy Richman killed himself after his son was killed at Newtown Elementary School, and two teen survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting killed themselves in 2019.

The trauma and loss was insurmountable for some.

But somehow Anne Marie Hochhalter endured. She thrived and lived her life well. She loved her animals, her friends and the ocean, which she only got to visit once.

“She was fiercely independent,” Sue Townsend told The Denver Post. “She was a fighter. She’d get knocked down -- she struggled a lot with health issues that stemmed from the shooting — but I’d watch her pull herself back up. She was her best advocate and an advocate for others who weren’t as strong in the disability community.”

Townsend's stepdaughter Lauren Townsend was killed at Columbine and said she "acquired" Anne Marie as a daughter in the aftermath of the shooting and Anne Marie's mother's suicide.

Perhaps there is still hope that Americans can unite and stop new ripples of trauma and loss from consuming so much that is good in this world.

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The family of Luis Garcia, the student fatally shot outside of East High School last year, sued Denver Public Schools and the district’s Board of Education this week, accusing officials of failing to take “reasonable steps” to protect kids from harm by removing armed police from the building.

The lawsuit also alleges to know the identity of the person who shot the 16-year-old, even though the Denver Police Department has not arrested anyone in connection with the killing. As of Tuesday, the investigation into the shooting remains ongoing, police said.

The teen, identified in the lawsuit as Jose Luis Garcia-Bobadilla, was shot while sitting in his car outside of the city’s largest high school on Feb. 13, 2023. He died more than two weeks later on March 1. Garcia’s death preceded another high-profile shooting at East only weeks later, when a student wounded two deans inside the school.

“Luis got shot for no reason,” said Matthew Barringer, an attorney representing the teenager’s family, adding, “(The district) utterly failed that duty of trying to keep people safe.”

The family’s lawsuit was filed Monday in Denver District Court under the state’s , which was adopted after a fatal shooting at Arapahoe High School in 2013. The suit names more than 20 former and current DPS leaders and school board members, including Superintendent Alex Marrero. It was filed by the teenager’s family, including his parents Santos Garcia Mata and Criselda Bobadilla Sandoval.

DPS spokesman Scott Pribble declined to comment for this story, citing ongoing litigation.

Following the shooting, Denver police said they were investigating a 17-year-old for illegal possession of a handgun and a 16-year-old for auto theft and felony eluding. But neither teen was arrested on charges specifically related to Luis’s death, and, on Tuesday, neither the Denver Police Department nor the Denver District Attorney’s Office would confirm whether they were ever charged with anything.

The lawsuit alleges that on the day Luis was shot, a juvenile identified only by the initials A.A. stole a Kia Sportage, picked up another juvenile and went “joy-riding” around the city.

A.A. — who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, along with his mother, B.B. — was in the car on East 17th Avenue near a stoplight at City Park Esplanade, next to the school, when he ran the red light and drove toward Luis “at a high rate of speed,” firing on the East High junior, the lawsuit alleges.

Witnesses heard four or five gunshots, according to the lawsuit.

More than a year after the shooting, Luis’s family hasn’t received answers or accountability for the teenager’s death, Barringer said, stressing that there still haven’t been any charges filed in the case.

“It’s been utterly lacking in those regards,” the attorney said.

Until recently, few lawsuits were filed under the Claire Davis School Safety Act. The law, which is named after Claire Davis, the student killed in the Arapahoe High shooting, allows parents to sue if a school fails to provide “reasonable care” to protect students and workers from “reasonably foreseeable” violence.

The first known, and most high-profile, case came after the parents of Kendrick Castillo, a student killed in the 2019 STEM School Highlands Ranch shooting, sued the school three years ago. Castillo, 18, was killed after rushing one of the shooters. The Castillos refused a settlement with the school, with the parents saying they wanted to uncover more information about possible warning signs STEM officials might have received before the shooting.

The lawsuit by Luis’s parents alleges that DPS breached its duty to students and staff by removing school resource officers — or SROs — from campus, a decision that was made by the school board in 2020 during the national racial reckoning after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

In the wake of both East shootings, DPS faced heavy criticism from parents and educators about its discipline policies and the removal of school resource officers from Denver schools. The board voted last year — following the shootings — to reinstate armed police, which are now in 13 of the district’s largest high schools.

The Colorado Governmental Immunity Act prohibits most lawsuits against public agencies, including schools, for liability. Historically, it has been very difficult to hold schools legally responsible for violence, such as a shooting, because it would have to be proven that the officials showed willful and wanton conduct.

But the Claire Davis School Safety Act opened the door to such lawsuits by saying that schools can be held liable when there is violence, including murder.

Proving that DPS officials failed to provide reasonable care by not having SROs on campus is “a very, very difficult argument,” said Igor Raykin, an attorney who specializes in education law and is representing families in lawsuits that are testing whether the Claire Davis Act can be used to hold districts responsible for not intervening when students are bullied.

The argument Luis’s family is making in their lawsuit is difficult because of the Governmental Immunity Act and because it would essentially mandate that schools must have an SRO on campus or they could be held liable if any incidents occur, Raykin said. He added, though, that while the argument is a difficult one to make in court, the lawsuit isn’t frivolous.

Research is not clear on whether SROs prevent shootings, although studies have found that , such as fights.

The Board of Douglas County Commissioners on Tuesday approved

The road is a mile west of the school where Castillo, 18, was fatally shot on May 7, 2019, after he ran at one of two armed students who walked into his classroom.

Castillo’s classmates and friends Brendan Bialy and Josh Jones, who also rushed the gunman, survived the shooting. Jones was shot twice, while Bialy was not injured.

Kendrick’s father, John Castillo, told commissioners during a public hearing that the family is honored by the decision to rename the road – one that he drives every day.

Colorado lawmakers in 2020 voted to rename a portion of C-470 from University Boulevard to Santa Fe Drive, making it the Kendrick Castillo Memorial Highway.

The bill, which has passed the Colorado House but now faces a tough road ahead in the Senate, defines “assault weapon” generally as a semi-automatic gun (both pistols and rifles) that has a detachable magazine and one other feature in a list of things designed to make the gun easier to wield in an active-shooter environment. The bill also includes the destructive .50 rifles in the ban because of their ability to be used as a long-range sniper rifle capable of penetrating cars and walls.

We saw the deadly effect of these guns on March 22, 2021, when a shooter stalked his victims through a Boulder King Soopers firing repeatedly at employees and shoppers using a Ruger AR-556 pistol that he had legally purchased six days earlier. Ten innocent store employees and customers were killed.

We saw the deadly effect on July 20, 2012, when a shooter walked into a dark movie theater in Aurora and indiscriminately opened fire using an AR-15 rifle with a 100-round magazine that he had purchased legally along with other weapons a mere three months before the attack. The toll was unbearable — 12 dead and 70 injured many suffering life-altering wounds.

Colorado lawmakers limited high-capacity magazines in response to 15 rounds of ammunition, a decision that perhaps limited the death toll in Boulder as police closed in on the suspect exchanging fire.

Coloradans know the outcomes of these shootings are different when the guns are less efficient killing machines.

At Arapahoe High School, Claire Davis was the first and only victim of a student who walked through the door with a shotgun intent on killing a specific teacher but killing Davis whom he passed on his way into the school. Davis was a beloved student and daughter. The community’s loss was great and could have been 10-fold had the shooter had an assault weapon.

At the Stem School in Highlands Ranch, heroes like Kendrick Castillo were able to bring down one of two shooters armed with a parent’s stolen .22-caliber rifle, a Glock 21 handgun, a 9mm Beretta pistol, and a revolver. The Glock and the Beretta likely had removable magazines with 10 to 15 rounds. One shooter told investigators he was able to fire all the bullets and empty two guns before he fled the room. The other shooter fired once, killing Castillo who had charged at the gunman with other students. Several students were injured in the shooting, but the outcome could have been worse with different guns and more magazines.

The evidence is clear across a country riddled with mass shootings that two things determine the survivability of these tragedies – the capabilities of the shooters and their firepower.

The most deadly shooting in America combined a ruthless killer’s years of preparation stockpiling weapons and practicing with a crowded Las Vegas outdoor music venue. Fifty-eight people were killed and two victims died of complications with their injuries in coming years.

House Bill 1292 would not have prevented what happened in Las Vegas. The shooter stockpiled weapons for years, and the bill before the Colorado Senate this week does not ban possession of assault weapons already owned by Coloradans, but only bans the sale or transfer of the guns.

But the bill would force the next mass shooter just now hatching plans of slaughter to steal or purchase illegally the same guns used in Vegas, a barrier that could reduce the death toll or even prevent a mass killing event. An FBI report released in 2018, found that 40% of all shooters purchased their guns legally in the weeks leading up to a planned attack, while about 35% of shooters already owned the weapons they used in their crimes.

Repeatedly, stretching back not just decades but centuries, America’s courts have held that none of our rights are absolute.

“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

House Bill 1292 makes critical exceptions allowing active members of the U.S. military and the Colorado National Guard to purchase the weapons restricted by the legislation and it allows police officers and armored vehicle guards to purchase these weapons for their jobs.

The bill does not infringe on the right to keep and bear arms – it only places reasonable and necessary regulations on the capabilities of guns sold in Colorado.

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that guns can be regulated. The standard has been set through numerous cases that the Second Amendment protects guns that are “in common use at the time.” Are semi-automatic weapons with detachable magazines in common use? Statistics tell us that there are millions of these guns in circulation, a fact attorneys are likely to latch onto if this bill becomes law and when the law is then challenged.

We do see, however, the long list of banned guns in the bill as superfluous and inflammatory. Manufacturers can adjust to comply with the law without having legislation that targets their product’s names.

The bill does get one thing wrong. The Coloradans who own these guns, like the ubiquitous and popular AK-47, are using them for legal activities like hunting, range shooting, competitions and self-defense. Almost all of these gun owners are law-abiding citizens who own these guns responsibly. If mass shootings weren’t proliferating, if the threat weren’t so real and imminent, we would not regulate these guns.

Americans’ right to bear arms must be tempered with reasonable regulations that “insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

The fear mass shooters wield over the public — fear of going to schools, concerts, 4th of July parades, movie theaters and work — is stripping the blessing of liberty from every American, every day, and the future looks no brighter for our children if we fail to act.

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And in this climate of growing disregard for the Colorado Open Records Act and Colorado Open Meetings Law, lawmakers are considering a bill that would make it more difficult to challenge a school district that fails to properly disclose closed-door meeting topics. Public districts are already operating too much like private businesses; they don’t need encouragement from lawmakers too.

The $832,733 paid out to fired Douglas County Superintendent Cory Wise is the best possible case to be made for school board members to get their acts together and start acting like elected officials representing the public in a transparent and open manner. Taxpayers will foot this bill to cover school board members’ bad behavior.

Wise’s settlement is based on wrongful termination, but on a deeper level, Wise’s case was strong because four elected officials met secretly and one-on-one to conspire to terminate Wise, rather than holding an open and honest public meeting where concerns were aired and debated. A separate lawsuit targeting the secret meetings drew a strong rebuke from Douglas County District Court Judge Jeffrey K. Holmes who correctly noted that “the hiring and firing of a school district����ap superintendent is clearly a matter of public business.”

The rot of inside wheeling and dealing is not limited to the DougCo Board.

A number of media organizations are preparing to sue members of the Denver Board of Education for failing to notify the public of what would be discussed in an executive session. Board members disappeared behind closed doors for a five-hour executive session and emerged with a new policy position and a public statement about the most controversial issue the district has faced in decades — whether or not police officers should be in school buildings for security.

Do they think voters are stupid? Coloradans know better than to accept this type of behavior.

The public deserved an open and honest conversation about the reversal of a position on school security in the wake of two shootings at East High School.

School board officials must do their business in public whether or not they like the scrutiny — it’s part of the job they sign up for when they run for “public” office. And open debate helps the public have confidence in the school board. As it stands now, parents and teachers assume this board is more concerned with protecting their image, remaining in office, and bolstering their careers than doing what is best for students.

The examples are endless:

• As the DPS board has been dealing with a budget shortfall, board members spent $43,000 on a mediator in an effort to end embarrassing public disagreements — disagreements that ironically have centered around an attempt by the board president to control what other board members say in public. Consider that for a moment. Board members should be encouraged to speak freely about board deliberations and their opinions on important issues.

• Briefly, the DPS board considered giving themselves raises. The discussion on the question happened in an executive session to discuss legal advice related to board compensation. The with no transparency about who proposed raises of up to $33,000.

• In Broomfield, the school district is refusing to release a report about a months-long investigation into the behavior of a football coach that ultimately resulted in the coach resigning. There is a public interest in this document as this coach/teacher will likely be applying for other jobs in this state.

• And perhaps most egregiously, the STEM School has fought tooth and nail to prevent the release of documents to the parents of Kendrick Castillo who was shot and killed while trying to disarm a student who opened fire in his Highlands Ranch classroom in 2019. Any details that compromise student safety — schematics that show building emergency exits or the location of buttons that call for the police — could be redacted as could student names that violate privacy laws. Castillo’s family is fighting for the safety of every student in this state, while STEM officials are fighting to protect their reputations.

• In Woodland Park, the board of education , circumventing the normal process, public meetings and waiting times. In an email, one board member referred to efforts to get the school approved as “divide, scatter, conquer.” Several board members discussed the plan before any public meeting and informed each other that the charter school’s MOU would be discussed during “board housekeeping” rather than appearing as an agenda item.

The intent seems clear — obfuscate that a controversial topic is on the agenda so the public doesn’t show up and express concerns.

If Colorado lawmakers pass House Bill 1259, these efforts to hide public business will only grow. The bill would make it more difficult for Coloradans to use the only tool they have to enforce the Open Meetings Law — civil lawsuits. Yes, one attorney is arguably overly litigious when it comes to holding districts accountable for violations of the open meetings laws. But the bill by Reps. Gabe Evans and Lindsey Daugherty and Sens. Rachel Zenzinger and Cleave Simpson will allow a district to collect costs and attorney fees from anyone who files a lawsuit and loses in court. It will have a chilling effect on people wishing to hold public officials accountable.

Perhaps if this editorial was full of examples of transparency and open and honest efforts to comply with the law, we would feel differently, but an abundance of examples clearly shows that school districts are failing the transparency test.

Lawmakers should vote down House Bill 1259 and school board members should take note of the nearly million-dollar settlement out of Douglas County and reconsider their secretive, plotting behavior.

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A judge will decide whether to make public information about the 2019 shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch that the parents of Kendrick Castillo have learned through their lawsuit against the school — including what their attorney says are details of missed warnings about the shooters.

John and Maria Castillo said in court Wednesday that they have learned more about the May 7, 2019, shooting that took their son’s life, and want that information — collected through the discovery process during litigation — released so it can be used to improve school safety.

“We wanted to hear things that weren’t being told to us,” John Castillo said when asked why he listened to the depositions given as a result of the family’s lawsuit.

The Castillos have refused the $387,000 settlement offered in their lawsuit against STEM and want their case to go before a jury, which could find the school failed to protect their son. Kendrick Castillo, 18, died after rushing one of the shooters during the attack, which will mark its fourth anniversary next month. (The settlement is not an admission of liability.)

Retired Judge Christopher C. Cross served as a special master during Wednesday’s hearing in Douglas County District Court and will decide what materials and information should be made public.

Only part of the hearing, which included testimony from John Castillo and Michael Davis, the father of a student killed in a shooting at Arapahoe High School in 2013, was open to the public. The judge and attorneys for both parties were expected to spend the afternoon privately debating what specific discovery could be released.

For now, the information remains confidential. Douglas County District Court Judge Jeffrey Holmes previously put the records under a protective order to keep them from public review.

Attorneys with STEM and the Douglas County School District argued during the hearing that some of the materials should remain secret because of concerns about school safety and student privacy.

But during opening statements, they also appeared to agree with the Castillos’ attorney, Dan Caplis, that other information could be released to the public. It’s unclear exactly what that information is as it is confidential, but Caplis said it would prove that one of the shooters was “a walking red flag.”

The Castillos initially sued both the school and the district, but the latter was dismissed as a defendant.

The lawsuit is believed to be the first to test Colorado’s Claire Davis School Safety Act, which state legislators passed eight years ago. The law is named after Claire Davis, 17, who was killed by another student at Arapahoe High.

Michael Davis and others who helped create the law testified in support of the Castillos on Wednesday, saying that the intent of the law was for information — especially anything that sheds light on failures by a school or district to keep students and staff safe — to be released to the public so others could learn from those mistakes.

“We hope for the better, but systems fail,” Davis said during the hearing.

Cross said in an order making the hearing partially open to the public that the case is of the “highest interest to the public,” noting that “unfortunately, school shootings remain in the news and the public interest in doing anything possible to stop such violence is immeasurable.”

To his knowledge, the Claire Davis School Safety Act “has not been tested in court ” before, Cross said in his order.

The act allows parents to sue if a school fails to provide “reasonable care” to protect all students and employees from the violence that is considered “reasonably foreseeable.” Before it became law, it was even harder to hold schools legally responsible for shootings, in part, because it would have to be proven that officials showed willful and wanton conduct.

The Castillos’ lawsuit was potentially the first lawsuit filed under the act — or at least the first to make it this far in court. In recent months, at least two other lawsuits have been filed that are seeking to expand the law’s reach so it can be used to hold districts responsible for failing to stop bullying.

The crux of the issue centers on what the Castillos can do with the information they learned during their discovery. In most cases, such information can be shared with the public. But the law “only deals with allowing full discovery,” Cross wrote.

“Still, it very well may imply that the plaintiff can and should disseminate that information in the hopes that measures to prevent school shootings in the future might ensue,” Cross wrote.

He acknowledged that one of the arguments for keeping certain information confidential is that it could be used to help carry out future attacks.

Caplis, the Castillos’ attorney, previously has said they discovered information that “will shock the conscience of the public and will force urgently needed school safety changes.”

“Have they fixed the failures that led to Kendrick Castillo being carried out of that school dead?” Caplis said during Wednesday’s hearing, adding, “People can use that information to make things safer.”

The students who carried out the attack “were able to spot the fatal flaws in the STEM and DCSD security system,” Caplis said.

But David Jones, an attorney for STEM, pushed back on the idea of any kind of potential cover-up by the school.

“That’s simply not true,” he said. “The essential lessons of this shooting were learned and have been in the public eye for almost four years. Some information should not be made public because it could be used as a roadmap for others who wish to (carry out) a violent act.”

Both STEM and the district argued that federal student privacy law and Colorado’s public records act prevent some details about current and former students and personnel records from being released.

“Douglas County School District is not here to shield any information from the public about what led to the events on May 7 and what happened on May 7,” said Gwyneth Whalen, an attorney representing the school district.

But, she said, the district “has to draw the line about releasing information about ongoing security and school safety measures.”

Releasing details about safety measures, such as panic button locations and threat and suicide assessment protocols, would endanger current students, Whalen said.

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