A Principal Sought to Expel a Student Charged with Attempted Murder. He Was Fired Instead

Thousands of parents and students in Denver are calling foul and demanding the reinstatement of a popular middle-school principal who was fired last week after he tried to keep a student charged with attempted murder out of his school and then spoke to a local TV station about his concerns about school safety.

Denver Public Schools fired McAuliffe International School principal Kurt Dennis last week, more than three months after he raised concerns about school safety during an interview with 9News, a local NBC affiliate. During the March interview, Dennis revealed that a young student at his school had recently been charged with attempted murder and various gun crimes, and that his staffers were required to pat the child down every day, which they were not trained to do.

Dennis spoke out days after a 17-year-old East High School student shot two administrators who were tasked with patting him down before he entered that school.

Dennis and his supporters say they believe his termination was an act of retaliation by district leaders, including superintendent Alex Marrero. District leaders deny that.

In his termination letter, they said Dennis was fired for divulging confidential information about the criminally charged student to the 9News reporter, “causing the student to be singled out by faculty and staff and ostracized by his peers.” They’ve also implied that Dennis’s efforts to keep the student out of McAuliffe International were racially motivated, noting repeatedly in the termination paperwork that the child was a “young student of color.”

Dennis and his lawyer have threatened to file a federal lawsuit against the district. More than 5,500 people have signed a Change.org petition calling for Dennis to be reinstated. And earlier this week, hundreds of people rallied in Denver in support of the embattled educator.

Last month, National Review wrote about the deteriorating safety conditions inside Denver schools, and the renewed efforts to reinstate school-resource officers. The majority-minority district was one of several nationwide that cut ties with their local police in the wake of racial-justice riots that erupted after George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis in 2020.

Critics allege that Denver leaders have intentionally watered down their school-discipline policies for racial-justice reasons, and are prioritizing keeping dangerous kids in school, compromising the safety of the rest of the student population. Two years ago, when the district updated its so-called discipline matrix — a document that directs how students are to be disciplined for a variety of offenses — they intentionally made it harder to expel students and limited when police could be called, part of an effort to “disrupt bias, fight disproportionality,” and to “end the school-to-prison pipeline,” according to a board document.

That was the climate Dennis was working in when he tried to have one of his students expelled or required to take online classes. In addition to the attempted first-degree-murder charge, the student faced additional charges, including assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a handgun, illegally discharging a gun, and motor-vehicle theft, according to the 9News report. Denver police had said “the student should not return to a traditional [school] setting.”

But the district rebuffed Dennis’s efforts to have the student removed from school. The student didn’t have a gun at school, so in the eyes of the district there was no problem.

“As there is no evidence that [the student] was in possession of a firearm on his school grounds or at any other DPS school, the request for an extended suspension and expulsion hearing is denied,” the district’s discipline director wrote. “Please return the student to school.”

School personnel were required to pat the student down before entering the school building.

In his termination letter, the district wrote that Dennis told law enforcement that because “the student’s family had to seek housing with family members outside of District boundaries,” he could no longer attend McAuliffe International. But that wasn’t true. Trying to force the boy out of the school is a violation of district policies, the termination letter said.

The termination documents downplayed the criminal history of the student Dennis wanted removed, ignoring the threat he posed to students and staff. In the district’s view, Dennis was simply targeting “a student of color.”

“Based on the weight of the evidence collected, including your responses, I have determined that you repeatedly attempted to remove a young student of color from McAuliffe International, persisted in those attempts despite being directed by the District on multiple occasions that removal was not available or appropriate, and undertook those actions to undermine the District’s stated position with the intent and purpose of preventing the student from attending McAuliffe International,” the district’s human-resources director wrote.

In late March, after 17-year-old Austin Lyle shot two East High administrators tasked with patting him down — and then killed himself — Dennis participated in an interview with 9News. He acknowledged that he could be putting his career at risk by speaking out about the district’s policies around pat-downs and allowing dangerous kids to attend school in person.

“I didn’t attack anyone that works for the district. I didn’t question anyone’s character or integrity,” Dennis told National Review “What I did was bring to light a district policy that I think endangers our students and our staff.”

The district has since amended its policy to require that a school-safety officer be present when pat-downs are conducted.

Dennis did not name the student accused of attempted murder during the interview, and he did not provide any identifying features, including the student’s race or gender. But his termination documents state that the “9News story highlights confidential documents to which you had access in your capacity as principal.” Those documents “helped the reporter and the McAuliffe International community to identify the student,” the termination letter states.

According to the district, Dennis broke federal privacy law, violated district policies, and created “legal exposure” for the district.

“What I said publicly in my interview with 9News is not any different than information that might be communicated by a principal to their community after a safety incident might have occurred on their campus,” Dennis told National Review. He declined to comment when asked if he provided any confidential documents to the 9News reporter.

Attempts to reach Dennis’s lawyer, David Lane, were unsuccessful. Lane has told Denver media that the district has violated Dennis’s First Amendment rights. “Any government employee who is coming forward raising an issue of serious public concern — which is exactly what Kurt did — has complete 100 percent First Amendment protection,” he told 9News.

Bill Good, a school-district spokesman, told National Review in an email that whistleblowers “are crucial to protecting the interests of the public and improving the education and safety we provide to our students,” and the district has “robust protections in place for our employees who voice their concerns.” But “the District does not agree that revealing confidential student information is protected by the first amendment,” Good said in an email.

When asked if the district was accusing Dennis of racially discriminating against the student charged with attempted murder, Good said, “It would be fair to say that it was a factor,” and that it was “just another example of exclusionary discipline on a student of color.”

At the end of the termination documents, the district cites three examples of alleged discrimination occurring at McAuliffe International under Dennis’s leadership.

In one of the cases, allegations of inappropriate discipline against students with disabilities were ultimately deemed to be “unfounded for policy violations.” Another example cited by the district, an investigation into a complaint from January that a student of color received “disparate treatment” in relation to discipline, has not been completed.

The third case cited by the district similarly involved a minority student who complained in 2022 after receiving six out-of-school suspensions in less than a year. An internal investigation found that “the out-of-school suspensions issued to the complainant student were implemented in an overly punitive manner and that MIS’s overuse of out-of-school suspensions more generally was having disparate impact on students of color.” But reporting from Chalkbeat Colorado found that this was not unique to McAuliffe International, and the rate of out-of-school suspensions at McAuliffe last year was lower “than many other large Denver middle schools.”

Dennis called the allegation that he discriminated against minority students “hurtful.”

“We treat our students as individuals, and we handle each situation based on the details of that situation,” he said. “We don’t discriminate against students based on their ethnicity, race, gender, or any other distinguishing characteristic.”

Paul Ballenger, one of the parents behind the Change.org petition calling for Dennis to be reinstated, said he is not aware of any racism on Dennis’s part.

“I’ve never seen anything to indicate that there’s any type of racist or exclusionary behavior at McAuliffe,” said Ballenger, a security professional whose daughter just graduated from the school. He said he doesn’t buy the district’s contention that Dennis racially discriminated against the student charged with attempted murder. “If the student is white and accused of attempted murder, you’re saying Kurt would let him in the school? Because I can tell you right now he would not,” Ballenger said.

Despite the district’s claims, Dennis’s supporters say they’re sure that district leaders are going after him because he spoke out and put the district in a bad light. Dennis worked for twelve years at McAuliffe International and is considered something of a founding father of the high-performing innovation school. Several of his supporters are minority students, parents, and school staff.

People who signed the Change.org petition have called Dennis a “hero,” and have said the district’s actions are “appalling” and “vengeful.”

“This isn’t the first time a principal has been fired due to speaking out against the decisions of Superintendent Marrero. This is however the first time it’s made news,” one person wrote.

“This is 100 percent retaliation,” said Steve Katsaros, who helped to found the Parents-Safety Advocacy Group, or P-SAG, to combat the deteriorating safety conditions in Denver schools.

“I don’t believe for one second this is a legitimate sacking,” said Eve Chen, who authored the Change.org petition with Ballenger.

Chen said she decided to send her daughter to McAuliffe International in part because Dennis had the courage to raise red flags publicly. She believes the district’s firing of Dennis is part of an effort to send the message to other district employees that “if you actually speak out, if you don’t fall in line, this is what’s going to happen.”

Dennis said he is particularly frustrated that district leaders waited to fire him until July.

“That’s really put my kids and my school and my staff in a really tough position to be without a leader a month before the school year starts,” he said. “That feels punitive, not just to me, but it feels punitive to my community.”

Ballenger, who is running for a school-board seat, also questioned the timing of Dennis’s firing coming during summer break when the school board is on break. “So, everyone’s all fired up, but there’s no one here to yell at,” he said.

The board is next slated to meet in late August, when members will have the ability to approve Dennis’s firing or reinstate him. However, board members have said that even if they do reinstate Dennis, it would be up to district leaders to decide where he would serve.

Dennis’s preference is clear. “The ideal outcome for me is full and complete reinstatement to my former position at McAuliffe International School,” he said.

Dennis is not the only Denver principal to struggle with how to protect their students from potentially dangerous classmates. The district also declined to expel a student who wrote in a late January text, “About to shoot up the school and go for the principal only,” 9News reported. In that case, district leaders told the principal at the Denver Center for International Studies that if she received a restraining order, she would be the one kept from coming to school, not the student, the station reported.

The principal did not have the restraining order served, but emailed the judge saying, “I remain concerned for my personal safety and that of my school.”

The shooting at East High in March was one of at least three shootings in or around the school during the last school year. In September, a 14-year-old boy was shot in the mouth outside a rec center near the school. The boy, an innocent bystander, survived.

In February, a 16-year-old soccer player was shot in his car outside the school. He died.