The Context Behind the Complaint: Coffee House Conversation

Estimated Read Time: 5 minutes

On April 13, a 33-page Charge of Discrimination (The Complaint) was filed on behalf of Corey Wise by his attorneys with numerous allegations of discriminatory conduct against our newest board members. The document was thorough and provided information going back two years. We thought a deeper dive would be helpful in order to unpack some of the most poignant pieces of the complaint and put them into greater context. Read The Complaint in its entirety here.

One point of agreement among everyone involved (all board directors and Wise) is that on Jan. 28, Wise had an in-person conversation at Fika Coffee House with Directors Mike Peterson and Christy Williams to discuss his employment. 

The contents of that conversation have been framed in different ways, depending on who is telling the narrative. To hear Directors Peterson and Williams speak of the experience (see 58:30 in the video link), Wise was not given a job ultimatum to resign or be fired, but instead discussed “all the options in his contract, both unilateral termination on both sides, including termination for cause.”  Wise’s recording appears to contradict that claim, and The Complaint clearly outlines some of the discrepancies. It is notable to add that the community learned through local media coverage (The Denver Channel, Colorado Public Radio, 9news) that the coffee house conversation was recorded by Wise.

The least appropriate setting for this conversation

Before we jump into the content of the conversation, we want to recognize that Wise had a conversation about the status of his employment after a 25-year career with DCSD at a public coffee house. Section 138 of The Complaint has statements from Director Williams: “I feel like we want to do what’s right by you, we don’t want to make this horrible. We don’t want to make this super public, but we are prepared to do that if that’s the direction in which it has to go. We don’t want that for you because we want you to be able to, if you choose, to find another, you know, find another job. We don’t want this to be super public and have it be horrible.”

From our perspective, “doing right” by Wise would have been granting him his due process employment rights, at a minimum. And Director Williams’ repeated phrase, “super public,” is curious, making us wonder if not wanting to fire Wise publicly was for his own good or for theirs. 

Was a job ultimatum issued?

Let’s walk through the timeline of what we already know about what the four new board directors have stated with the new information that we have from The Complaint.

The Complaint indicates that Wise was given a job ultimatum. Section 142 outlines Director Peterson’s specific statements offering to pay Wise through June 2022, with a warning to accept the offer or they might have “to go for cause.”

We have already known that Director Williams told Director Ray about a job ultimatum in a recorded conversation covered by a Colorado Community Media piece. According to the recording, Director Williams conveyed this message about her conversation with Wise to Director Ray: “he could consider his resignation, but we wanted a different direction for the future.” She then followed by definitively telling Director Ray the district would go in a different direction with leadership. This is congruent with Wise’s statements in The Complaint.

Director Peterson’s statements reflect differing language. In The Complaint Section 160(b), during the BoE special meeting on Feb. 4, Director Peterson denied that Wise was not told he would be fired if he did not resign. Instead, he insisted that Wise “was asked to come back with a thoughtful consideration of what he wanted to do and then it [wasn’t if you don’t resign] or you [will] be terminated; the answer was or the process will move forward as a Board.” This contradicts earlier statements.

Does the language around the job ultimatum matter?

As we know, a lawsuit was filed by a citizen on Feb. 4, the same day Wise was fired, alleging violations of Colorado Open Records Laws (COML). The presiding Judge, Jeffrey Holmes, granted a preliminary injunction on March 9, ordering the DCSD school board to follow Colorado Open Meetings Laws. Judge Holmes included some strong language in the order:

“The hiring and firing of a school district’s superintendent is clearly a matter of public business. It is a subject that can generate strong feelings and it is a matter on which the public can expect to be fully informed.”

What is notable is that Directors Peterson, Williams and Myers all testified at the hearing for the COML lawsuit on Feb. 25. The information we have from media sources about the hearing is limited to the context of conversations held by the board directors in violation of the open meetings laws, and we do not have details about their testimony regarding the ultimatum given to Wise. 

So a lingering and very important question – will Wise’s recording of the coffee house conversation on Jan. 28th confirm that he was given an ultimatum, in contradiction to the sworn testimony the three directors gave on Feb. 25?