Community Conversation — Accountability Subverted Once Again by “Kids First” board directors
The following is part of DougCo Collective’s “Community Conversations” and was written by a Douglas County community member (parent, student, teacher/staff or community member). The intent of “Community Conversations” is to give members of the Douglas County community an opportunity to contribute to the larger DCSD conversation with their lived experiences and perspectives. Usually these conversations are kept anonymous; however, the author of this particular conversation requested to have their name published.
Estimated Read Time: 8 minutes
We have seen a pattern arise with the “Kids First” majority board members – avoidance of accountability.
How they do this happens in one of two ways. When confronted with their transgressions, they either deny they did anything wrong, and further dig in their heels into their alternative reality OR they simply walk away, dismissing the harm they’ve caused and disrespecting those they’ve harmed. We saw this with the Corey Wise Ultimatum, the Equity Policy rewrite, the 2022-23 failure to pass the MLO/Bond, a recent discrimination lawsuit and, this past weekend, the District Accountability Committee (DAC) snub.
In the case of Wise’s firing and the ultimatum that led to it, Directors Peterson and Williams first denied that they gave him an ultimatum, which, we know from the recording, was a lie. They even go so far as to tell Corey, “we don’t want to make this horrible, we don’t want to make this super public,” but they were willing to do so if he didn’t go quietly. In addition, this board action was done outside of public view, which violated Colorado Open Meeting Law (COML). Once again, the “Kids First” board majority refused to take responsibility and admit to wrongdoing to the DCSD community. Instead, 16 months later, a judge found them guilty of breaking the law, and the taxpayers had to foot the bill.
With the Equity Policy, the “Kids First” board majority seemed interested in quickly delivering on their campaign promise to shift away the district's focus on equity, citing that it was a “distraction.” Once they took office, they didn’t seem to have a clear plan for the Equity Policy other than removing the word “equity,” claiming that it was divisive, and pushing the narrative that the policy was designed for “equality of outcome, clearly either not understanding or pretending not to understand the difference between equity and equality. After the community rallied for Wise and the Equity Policy, and administration from almost every school in the district came out in support of the original policy, the “Kids First” majority, after dragging the process out for a year, changed the policy to suit their misconceptions and ill-informed supporters, making it crystal clear that their intention was to attack the LGBTQ (particularly trans) community, and disregard any racial or cultural differences in performance in the name of being pro-human/colorblind.
Nowhere in this process have we heard them take accountability for the harm they have caused to the culture in the district, ignoring the voice of educators, the community members who showed up in droves in support of it and to the students, who are impacted most by their changes. They simply did what they wanted and walked away, adding to the heaping pile of distrust they have accumulated since they took office.
The same can be said for the November 2022 MLO/Bond attempt. That trough of mistrust just gets deeper and the lack of ownership for those who created it means that relationships are permanently scarred and regaining any trust back is now that much more difficult. The board majority was told that distrust was the largest hurdle in passing the funding measures, but I cannot identify a single thing that they did to try to make amends in the name of school funding. Instead, they chose to delay addressing their changes to the Equity Policy until after the November 2022 election, kicking the can down the road.
In March, a middle school student reported racist and discriminatory practices of his peers and reached out to the district for help. Nothing happened. In April, the family spoke at a BoE meeting shining a light on the discrimination the students have faced in DCSD. Again, nothing constructive, reparative, or solution-oriented happened. Words were said, the white children in the school were asked if the school was a hostile environment (to which they said no, because they are NOT the ones being targeted), the Superintendent condemned racism and said it wasn’t tolerated in DCSD, but again, nothing happened. DCSD and the board majority walked away from taking accountability for the culture and the hostile environment in and out of the schools (a.k.a. the boardroom) and left a vacuum of silence once again, ergo a lawsuit was filed.
And now, here we are, once again witnessing the lack of relational aptitude with the current board majority. Director Myers stepped down as the District Accountability Committee’s (DAC) liaison over the weekend. Why?
If you watched the June 15th BoE meeting, you might start to see the landscape come into view. The Thursday before that board meeting, DAC met and was given 20 minutes to review Director Peterson’s personally-revised draft of Policy KBB (now KB); Parent and Community Engagement Policy. Provided with only 10 minutes in breakout groups and less than 10 minutes to discuss as a committee, the DAC found themselves still in conversation when the time was up. Frustrated, they asked Director Myers if she would support them in asking the BoE for more time to discuss and send a formal recommendation and review back to the BoE. Director Myers agreed, seemingly noticing the DAC was invested and out of time. The next morning, Director Peterson uploaded another draft of the KB policy that was different from the one presented to DAC at the meeting the prior evening. At the BoE meeting the next Tuesday, Director Myers denied DAC more time to review the policy and instead voted to pass Peterson’s version of the KB policy.
Earlier in the meeting, Director Meek requested that discussion of KB be removed from the agenda, given the request of the DAC and the support of Director Myers, but Myers denied the request. This was the first of two actions she took against the DAC that night. Public comment followed shortly after, and two DAC members spoke about the KB policy – one pointing out the vulnerability the policy, as Peterson had written it, opened DCSD to litigation, not to mention the harm it will create for our students. And after all, aren’t they supposed to put kids first? A second DAC member exposed the truth of the evening, showing frustration and disbelief that Director Myers was not true to her word and her responsibility as liaison to the DAC. With these comments out in public view, Director Myers had the opportunity to see the implications of her second action that night. She was now 100% aware that her committee, which she is supposed to be a conduit for, was furious. They were angry she went back on her word. This was pivotal because THIS, if she really felt there was a miscommunication, is where she could take corrective action, publicly and on the record at the BoE meeting. But she didn’t; she doubled down and voted to pass the policy as written by Peterson. You can imagine how DAC felt. Betrayed.
At the BoE Retreat on July 31, 2023, this topic arose again. Director Myers insisted that she needed to stay on DAC as the liaison and that she had made a mistake and needed to repair it. Days before the August DAC meeting, the committee members received an email acknowledgement from Director Myers that she understood that some DAC members were upset, but that she just changed her mind and apologized for not telling us in advance that she was going back on her word, but she did not acknowledge nor apologize for the harm she created. I am going to go out on a limb here… that did not sit well with DAC members.
Not surprisingly, at the DAC meeting on Aug. 17, 2023, many DAC members expressed their unfiltered anger at being treated with such disrespect. Here’s the deal, when you are in a relationship with someone or a group of people, and you cross the line of right and wrong, then deny it at first and then try to apologize later, you have created a tough uphill battle in repairing that relationship. To make reparations, you have to be able to listen to those you hurt, as hard as that is, and understand that their anger represents how much work you need to do to repair the relationship. An authentic engagement of reparation looks like sincere opportunities offered to the harmed parties that the person who harmed can do to begin working and repairing trust. It’s a long process, but it should be done with sincerity. When the assumption that a weak email apology is enough and no effort to repair harm has been offered, you will be stuck in the same place, no path forward.
Authentic reparation is a collaborative plan, led by the one who has done harm, offering ideas and suggestions on actions they can take to show those whom they have harmed that they are sincere and believe these relationships are worth repairing. That is not what happened. In fact, at one point, Myers asked if the committee wanted her to resign, but the answer was “no;” they wanted her to repair.
As of Saturday morning, Aug. 19, 2023, Director Myers has resigned as the BoE liaison to the DAC. Perhaps she will announce that at tonight’s BoE meeting.
Instead of working through it and trying to rebuild the relationship, she’s walked away. Not only will she miss a learning and growth opportunity, she has now saddled interim Director Jason Page with the mess of distrust and deception that she left behind.
