Denver’s public schools are amazing places where students thrive with the help of talented teachers and staff, but we are worried the adults running the Denver Public School Board are going to screw it all up with their dysfunction.

So far, we have been fairly pleased with the leadership of Superintendent Alex Marrero and we hope the board directors don’t scare him away. The district needs stability, not acrimony and name calling.

We have suggestions for how the board can move forward from the conflict and disagreement that has threatened to tear it apart.

First, the board has been set up to fail by a new governance model adopted last year. It should not be the job of the board president to police the behavior and actions of other board members. Such a model would create conflict with any organization, let alone one that was already on edge following a months-long investigation. School Board Director Tay Anderson was accused of rape in 2021, but the investigators found the allegations were not credible (no victims came forward). However, investigators uncovered evidence that Anderson had flirted with two high school students.

Anderson should have resigned for the good of the community – which is divided by those who support him and those who want him ousted from a position of power over young women — but he didn’t, and now the board must find a way to move forward.

Board President Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán can propose that the policy governance model be changed so that it no longer dictates how directors conduct themselves or demands that the board speaks with “one voice.”

Board directors are duly elected to represent voters and should be empowered to speak out on issues and advocate in the community for what they think is best, even if that is at odds with the majority vote of the board. And critically, Gaytán can’t police other directors’ behavior. Voters are the ones charged with judging the actions of directors at the ballot box, and their say is final.

The board is not divided by enormous gaps in ideology – every director was backed by the teachers union and holds a progressive view of education policy. Rather, interpersonal conflicts have led to such strife that at the end of a board retreat last week, security had to be called in and the meeting ended abruptly before anything was resolved.

Just how childish were the board members acting? One of the facilitators scolded them at the end of the meeting, noting that their conflict, some of which comes from a divide between the Black community in Denver and the Hispanic or Latino community, was doing real harm.

One thing made clear by Denver Post reporter Jessica Seaman’s reporting is that most of the conflict was between Gaytán, who was elected in 2021 to District 2, and board directors Anderson, who was elected in 2019 to an at-large seat, and Scott Esserman, who was elected in 2021 to an at-large seat.

If all of the directors can’t set aside their dislike for each other to work together for the school district, we can replace them starting in 2023 with people who can leave their grievances at home for the good of students in the district.

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