The first footage to surface from the five-hour, closed-door school board meeting that Denver Public Schools fought to keep secret shows Superintendent Alex Marrero informing board members that then-Mayor Michael Hancock told him he planned to issue an executive order to force the reinstatement of armed police in schools if the board didn’t do so.
“The mayor can exact an executive order just like he did with the vaccination mandates. I understand this is a very problematic conversation to have. But it is going to happen. It is beyond our control,” Marrero told board members in the short video clip.
DPS board Vice President Auon’tai Anderson tweeted the nearly 2½-minute segment in the wake of the board’s vote Friday to release the video recording of its March 23 executive session — which a judge already had ordered the district to make public after ruling the meeting violated state law.
The board’s executive session took place one day after a 17-year-old student at East High School shot and wounded two administrators inside the school. That and other shootings increased public pressure on the board to reverse a decision it made in June 2020 to ban armed police officers in district schools. The decision to ban school resource officers, or SROs, came during widespread protests against police violence following the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota.
Hours after the East shooting, Marrero sent the board’s members a letter saying he planned to put armed officers back in Denver’s comprehensive high schools despite the fact that doing so “likely violates” Board of Education policy. “I am willing to accept the consequences of my actions,” Marrero wrote.
Following the March 23 executive session, Anderson said in media interviews that Marrero told members of Hancock’s plan to issue an executive order to require that officers be placed back in the schools. Hancock, however, disputed making any threats and denied through a spokesman that an executive order was discussed — though Marrero later confirmed to The Denver Post that the mayor did discuss with him the use of such an order.
In the video clip, which Anderson also distributed to the news media on Saturday, Anderson argues that any discussion of reinstatement of SROs was moot and that the board had its hands tied, saying the “mayor needs to just go ahead and take that control and do it.”
“Whether we agree or disagree, our opinions truly don’t matter around the reinstitution of safety officers across the district because you now told us that you will override whatever the board tells you if it is not in line with reinstating SROs,” Anderson said in the clip. “You have now given that very clearly to us. And that if you don’t do it, the mayor plans to do it.”
After the five-hour closed session, the DPS board reconvened its public meeting and voted without discussion to temporarily reverse its 2020 policy and reinstate police officers in its high schools. No executive order was ever issued by the mayor. A divided board voted in June to make the reinstatement permanent.
The Post and other news organizations argued the March meeting violated the Colorado Open Meetings Law and sued DPS for a recording of the meeting.
On June 23, Denver District Court Judge Andrew Luxen sided with the media plaintiffs, ruling the March 23 meeting violated the law because it wasn’t properly noticed and elected boards are not allowed to create public policy in secret. The judge ordered that the video be released, though that was put on hold after DPS appealed the ruling to the Colorado Court of Appeals.
On Friday, the DPS board voted unanimously to release the full five-hour video, which district spokesman Bill Good told The Post should be made public at some point on Monday after any conversations discussing specific students are redacted.
The news organizations involved in the lawsuit are The Post, Chalkbeat Colorado, Colorado Newsline, KDVR Fox 31, KUSA 9News and the Denver Gazette/Colorado Politics.
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