Denver’s school board is negotiating a new contract with Superintendent Alex Marrero and is expected to vote on it this week, even as two years remain on his current deal with the district.
The negotiations come as Marrero has been in the spotlight in recent months, notably with the school board rejecting his initial plan to close schools because of low enrollment in November and Denver Public Schools’ response to two shootings this spring at East High School.
The Board of Education is scheduled to vote on whether to approve the superintendent’s contract during a meeting Thursday, according to the agenda.
It’s unclear what changes will be made to Marrero’s existing contract. District officials said they couldn’t release the new document Tuesday because it’s still being negotiated.
When asked whether the superintendent — who currently makes $276,354 a year — will receive a pay raise, board spokesman Bill Good said DPS couldn’t yet comment on that because the contract hasn’t been approved and “we do not know what the final terms would be.”
Board members contacted by The Denver Post on Monday about the new contract either declined to comment or didn’t immediately respond.
The school board has met with Marrero several times in executive sessions — which are closed to the public — since last year to discuss his contract.
“The Board of Education and Superintendent have had ongoing dialog regarding his contract since his last evaluation in October 2022,” Good said in an email.
The school board hired Marrero in 2021 to replace Susana Cordova, who resigned from DPS’s top post after about two years.
Marrero had been on the job for less than a year when the school board voted to extend his employment by two years so that it would run through June 30, 2025. At the time, community organizations criticized the board’s vote, saying it lacked transparency.
Marrero’s tenure with DPS has faced challenges as city leaders and community members have criticized the district’s plans to close schools amid declining enrollment and its response to school safety.
When Marrero introduced his initial plan to close 10 schools last fall, he caught school board members off guard by changing the proposal for a second time and narrowing the plan down to two schools right before the vote. The board voted against the plan. However, the board has since decided to close three schools in the coming months.
Earlier this year, DPS and the Denver mayor’s office were at odds following the March 22 incident at East in which a student shot two administrators.
Vice President Auon’tai Anderson alleged Marrero told the board that if members didn’t act, there was a plan for Mayor Michael Hancock to use executive action to put armed police back into the city’s high school.
Directors voted in March to — at least temporarily — put school resource officers back into high schools after the shooting, a decision that came almost three years after the board decided to remove them.
The mayor’s office has repeatedly denied the allegations, including that there was ever a conversation about such a use of executive power. But Marrero told The Post that he and Hancock did discuss such an order by the mayor.
In April, Marrero also was criticized by Denver City Council members for not attending a meeting with them about school safety and sending his staff instead, Axios Denver reported.
When the school board evaluated Marrero’s performance in October, it concluded that “all baseline measures have been accomplished and progress has been made towards achieving the Board’s (policies).”
The evaluation noted that the superintendent’s strengths included recruiting and retaining Latino educators and building “a more affirming environment” for students and staff, notably among people in the LGBTQ community.
But at the same time, the evaluation noted there was still more work to do to hire additional Black teachers at DPS. The school board also requested that Marrero improve the district’s public image and implement “a more assertive public messaging strategy,” according to the evaluation.
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Updated 2 p.m. May 18, 2023: This story previously reported an incorrect salary for DPS Superintendent Alex Marrero. He made $276,354 this year.
