Leaders of Denver’s public school system fired a popular middle-school principal over the summer in retaliation for him speaking out on television about safety concerns involving a student who remained in class after shooting a liquor store clerk during an attempted robbery, according to a federal lawsuit filed in Colorado on Tuesday.
The lawsuit claims that Denver Public Schools leaders, including school board members, sought pretextual reasons to fire former McAuliffe International School principal Kurt Dennis after he spoke out during a TV news broadcast in March. Board members smeared Dennis as a racist, doxed him during a town hall meeting, and falsely claimed that he had violated the law by providing the media with confidential information, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also suggests that Dennis was not given a “meaningful opportunity to clear his name,” that his firing violated the district’s contract with its so-called “innovation zone” schools, and that district leaders — superintendent Alex Marrero and six of the district’s seven school board members — violated Dennis’s First and 14th Amendment rights.
“I look forward to having my case heard in court,” Dennis said in a prepared statement. “We recognize that this will be a long process but are resolute in seeking justice.”
Dennis’s lawyer, David Lane, told National Review in August that they intended to file a lawsuit against district leaders, and he would “hold the door of the courthouse open for them.”
The district maintains that Dennis was fired for divulging confidential information about the criminally charged student, and leaders have implied that Dennis’s efforts to keep the “young student of color” out of McAuliffe International were racially motivated.
When reached on the phone Tuesday, Denver Public Schools spokesman Scott Pribble, said he had not yet seen Dennis’s lawsuit. “Typically, we don’t comment on pending litigation,” he said.
Dennis’s firing occurred while parents in Denver warned of deteriorating safety conditions in the city’s schools. Critics allege that in recent years, 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.
It was in that context that Dennis was notified in late January by the Denver district attorney’s office that one of his middle-school students had been criminally charged with possessing an illegal firearm, the lawsuit states. A few weeks later, the DA’s office alerted Dennis that the student was facing eight additional charges, including an attempted murder charge, after he was accused of trying to rob a liquor store and shooting the clerk.
Denver police recommended that the student not be permitted back on campus. But when Dennis sought to have the student expelled or required to take classes at home, district leaders rejected his request. The student didn’t have a gun at school, so, in the eyes of the district, there was no problem with him being in class with other middle-school students.
School officials had to pat the student down before school, despite never being trained how to do so, the lawsuit states. “Administrators did their best to thoroughly check for weapons or contraband without violating a student’s privacy, attempting to imitate what they had seen at airport security,” according to the lawsuit.
In late March, after a 17-year-old student at a nearby city high school shot two administrators who were patting him down, Dennis spoke out about the situation at his school during an interview with Denver’s NBC affiliate. “Mr. Dennis was careful not to mention the student’s name, age, gender, or any other personally identifying information in his interview,” the lawsuit states.
But the district accused Dennis of providing the TV news reporter with confidential documents that “helped the reporter and the McAuliffe International community to identify the student,” a charge he denies. Any identifying information was redacted from the documents, which were “mandatorily available to the public under state law,” the lawsuit states.
“Mr. Dennis’s actions were entirely lawful and carefully considered to protect the confidentiality of the student,” the lawsuit states. It also notes that the student was likely identifiable to students and staff in a variety of other ways.
“The student was wearing a visible ankle monitor as a condition of bond, alerting others that the student was facing criminal charges. The pat-down policy further singled out the student, as well as the fact that the student was being escorted at all times by a staff member throughout the school day as part of the Safety Plan,” the lawsuit states.
The district has since amended its policy to require that a school-safety officer be present when pat-downs are conducted.
In early April, about two weeks after his TV interview, district leaders sent a “letter of concern” to Dennis’s supervisor regarding her “ability to effectively oversee Kurt Dennis,” the lawsuit states. District leaders did not attempt to get the supervisor’s required consent to fire Dennis, the lawsuit says, and when they did so, they violated their contract with the Northeast Denver Innovation Zone, or NDIZ, which states that “the District will not take action regarding the selection, retention or removal of school leaders without seeking the approval of NDIZ.”
Dennis’s termination documents downplayed the serious allegations against the student charged with attempted murder and instead accused Dennis of targeting a “student of color.”
When asked by National Review in July if the district was accusing Dennis of racially discriminating against the student charged with attempted murder, a district spokesman 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.”
The lawsuit accuses district leaders of making “statements associating Mr. Dennis with the white supremacy movement and [making] it clear that they were smearing him in public as a racist.” During a late-August meeting, during which the school board voted 6–1 to uphold Dennis’s firing, board member Charmaine Lindsay said that although Dennis had a lot of support in the community, “the majority of the people that we saw speaking out on behalf of Kurt were white.”
In early August, three school board members — Auon’tai Anderson, Scott Esserman, and Michelle Quattlebaum — held a town hall meeting to discuss Dennis’s firing, and during the meeting they distributed his termination letter, which included the Dennis family’s home address. The lawsuit alleges that this violated district policy and Colorado state law.
Over the summer, Dennis also faced a new charge — he was accused of creating a “seclusion room” where students of color who acted violently could calm down. During the late-August board meeting, Anderson read a poem he wrote about the room.
Dennis has called the space a “de-escalation room” and has defended it as “district-sanctioned.”
The lawsuit states that while district policy requires that an administrator be in a “de-escalation room” with a student, the “policies provide no instruction or mandate whatsoever on how school administrators should safely monitor a student from inside a room when a student is violently escalated and is physically attacking that administrator.”
“The only time Kurt Dennis was not in a de-escalation room with a student was when that student remained ‘escalated’ and was physically violent toward Mr. Dennis,” the lawsuit states. “At no time was any student simply locked into a room and left unmonitored by an administrator.”
“The claim that the de-escalation room was used only for students of color is demonstrably false,” the lawsuit adds.
Dennis, who started his career teaching English as a second language, was selected to lead McAuliffe International in 2011. According to the lawsuit, Dennis was “consistently one of the top performing principals in the DPS system,” and McAuliffe students — including students of color — outperformed the vast majority of their peers on state exams.
The lawsuit is seeking economic, compensatory, and punitive damages. While pursuing a new job, the suit says, “Mr. Dennis has been unable to find a comparable position in another district because the defamatory statements of the Defendants have so tarnished his reputation that no employer will hire him as a principal.”