The mother of three Denver Public Schools students has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that district leaders engage in a pattern of behavior that has violated parents’ First Amendment rights, prompted retaliation against employees and smeared the reputations of those who oppose district policies.
Kristen Fry, who brought the suit and is white, was accused in August 2023 of using a racial slur and of assault against a Black community activist and political consultant, Hashim Coates, that led to a rush to judgment by the school board to cast Fry as racist.
She endured rounds of attacks on social media by a board member, Coates and others. For five months she fought criminal charges (later dropped), and refusal by the district to release a security video from a public meeting that exonerated her.
Fry said she sees her ordeal as a continuation of hostile treatment by DPS of parents and school employees, including former McAuliffe International Principal Kurt Dennis who was fired in July 2023 after speaking out publicly about the district’s lax security practices. (Fry’s two step-children and one child attended McAuliffe.)
“Who knows how many other people this has happened to,’’ Fry said in a recent interview with Boardhawk. “My getting the word out is to see if there’s anybody else that has gone through this at the hands of these people or other people, whatever side they’re on.
“This is not political to me. It’s just that this is not the type of society any of us should aim to be living in.”
Defendants in the lawsuit are DPS, Coates, Midian Shofner (an associate of Coates), former DPS board member Auton’tai Anderson, current board members Scott Esserman, Xóchitl Gaytán and Michelle Quattlebaum. Fry is represented by James Kerwin of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative, free-market, public interest law firm.
None of the defendants would comment on a pending legal action or respond to a request for comment.
Echoes of Kurt Dennis firing
Fry’s situation carries echoes of how Superintendent Alex Marrero and board members Anderson, Esserman and Quattlebaum made premature accusations, and conducted “investigations’’ and “town halls’’ to accuse Dennis of racial bias to support firing him.
Dennis was fired for criticizing in a television interview the district’s policy of forcing the staff at McAuliffe to do daily pat-downs of a student charged with attempted first-degree murder. Dennis’ actions came after two deans were shot at East High School conducting a similar pat-down of a student.
In July 2023 DPS fired Dennis claiming he had violated students’ privacy by revealing confidential information. That explanation was widely dismissed as bogus, especially by parents at McAuliffe. Dennis also has federal lawsuit pending against DPS.
During July and August Anderson, Esserman and Quattlebaum, joined by Coates, who worked on their election campaigns, held meetings to ostensibly hear parent concerns about the Dennis issue; they offered little to no information or support of parent complaints at those meetings.
Fry said she felt the meetings were unnecessarily tense. She said she tried to talk to Anderson and Coates about conducting more civil conversations but was rebuffed.
The three board members would later launch their own “investigation’’ into allegations from an anonymous “whistleblower” that Dennis had improperly used a “seclusion room’’ in the school to calm disruptive students. They also accused Dennis of targeting Black students with use of the room. Those racial allegations were found to be false by a district investigation.
For the past two years the board has proudly promoted its “policy governance” practices which call for the board to focus strictly on policy and for the superintendent to handle all operational aspects of the district.
Initiating investigations, speaking at press conferences and public meetings to denounce Dennis seems a clear violation of “policy governance.’’
An unsubstantiated accusation of racial slur
But board members engaged in a similar rush to judgment with Fry, based solely on Coates’ unsubstantiated claim.
Fry’s troubles began when she asked the school board not to fire Dennis at the board’s public comment session on Aug. 21, 2023.The board was scheduled to take a formal vote at its regular Aug. 24 meeting on Marrero’s dismissal of Dennis the previous month.
She agreed to speak at a DPS meeting for the first time on behalf of a teacher who wanted anonymity for fear of retaliation from district supervisors.
Fry said she was pleased when then-board President Gaytán reminded the audience to remain civil and respectful of speakers. But Fry noticed that Coates was sitting next to the speaker’s podium and making comments while people spoke.
She said she asked a security guard to ask Gaytán to repeat her admonition about respect. He refused. She then asked a central administrator to help. She asked a supervisor who said there was nothing she could do.
When Fry was in line to speak, she said, Coates continued to talk while speakers addressed the board. She said she walked up and from several feet away said, “please be respectful of the speakers.” He didn’t seem to hear her first request, so she asked a second time.
She did not touch Coates, a video of the meeting clearly shows.
Fry said that Coates then turned around and in mock surprise and said, “Did you just call me a (n word)?’,” Fry said. “And I mean, I was just flabbergasted, ‘Like, what, what?’ So, I said, no, just be respectful of the speakers.”
While she spoke from the podium Coates interrupted her three times. She said she again asked him to be respectful adding a “sir’’ to be polite.
“And then I walked away and I’m like, Did anyone see that? What just happened?”
Amplifying the accusations
Fry said the next day, Aug. 22, Coates started doxing her on Facebook. He posted her picture and saying, “Does anybody know this person?”
That day he also sent an email to DPS board members, the superintendent and other DPS administrators, with his version of what occurred during the public comment meeting:
“I was assaulted at the DPS board meeting . . . [I was] sitting down . . . minding my . . . own business . . . and all of a sudden I feel this pain on my right shoulder, like somebody grabs my shoulder. So I turn, I’m like, ‘what the hell? Like who’s grabbing me like this?’ And I look and I recognize the face and it’s the face of Kristen Fry.
“And so she whispers ‘dumb n***er,’ and then backs up and I just said, ‘did you just call me a n***er?’ And so she goes to this theatrics of ‘Oh no,’ right. So I don’t make a big deal about it at the time because not the first time a racist has ever called me a n***er.” (This email is included in Fry’s lawsuit.)
According to an email obtained by Fry’s attorney, Gaytán wrote back the next morning, copying the board, that she “agree[d] with you in that these vile, racist epithets should not be uttered or have any part in our meetings,” and that what she called a “racist verbal attack by Kristen Fry [was] unconscionable.”
On Aug. 23 Coates appeared on the Facebook Live broadcast of Brother Jeff Fard, a well-known multimedia journalist, historian and community organizer who operates Brother Jeff’s Cultural Center in the Five Points neighborhood. Board member Anderson joined him. Coates asked if anyone knew this white woman who grabbed his shoulder without his consent and called me the N word. He said she assaulted him. Anderson backed up his claim.
Hostile comments directed at Fry were made in the broadcast’s chat. Coates also resurrected the issue at a November public comment meeting saying a McAuliffe parent called him the N word. Later in November Anderson said in a social media post that “Kristen Fry . . . assaulted Hashim Coates at our August board meeting and called him a dumb (N word) and now has a 1000 foot restraining order.”
Board members, Marrero rush to judgment
At its regular monthly meeting on Aug. 24, the board and Marrero spent 12 minutes expressing outrage and disdain about what Coates said Fry had done. (See video below).
Board members did not identify Fry or Coates by name in their comments. But by the time of that meeting Fry’s name had become well known through internet activity by Coates and others.
During the board’s comments, Fry and her husband received numerous emails and texts asking her if the board was talking about her. She would later receive more comments about how it was damaging her reputation.
Board member Scott Esserman said: “There are lines we do not cross, and we cannot cross. And when that line is crossed . . . it has to be addressed by us as one voice saying this is unacceptable.’’
Anderson apologized to Coates, who, he said “experienced an act of unspeakable racism.”
Charmaine Lindsay, who is no longer on the board, said the incident demonstrated a difference between white and Black audiences.
“It was especially disturbing that there’s an unwelcome environment when the audience is made up of one racial group primarily. Whereas when the audience is primarily black, which it has been for a lot of issues, it’s a friendly, welcoming environment for anybody that wants to come in.”
Marrero even backed up Coates claim that inappropriate physical contact had occurred, which the DPS video showed was false. He called the slur “a disgusting act’’ and “that some of us on the dais observed some of that in terms of the physical . . .”
Marrero also strongly suggested that Fry’s was a home that condoned racism.
“I’m wondering as a superintendent, how can we break the mold? We can do the best work in our schools before, during, and even after. But if they go back to a household where those values exist, it’s hard to break down.’’
Charges filed, then dropped
That same day the Denver Police Department contacted Fry to say that an arrest warrant was being issued for her for disturbing the peace, a city ordinance violation; Coates had filed a complaint with the police. She hired an attorney and tried unsuccessfully to discuss the situation with the police. The attorney has cost her tens of thousands of dollars, Fry said.
She also filed an open records request with DPS for the video of the public comment meeting. The district refused, saying it was a part of a criminal justice record – meaning Fry’s case.
DPS continued to deny her the video, that, when it was finally subpoenaed and released, showed no physical contact between Fry and Coates. It was from security cameras and had no audio. But the visual showed no hostility in the exchange between Coates and Fry, certainly not the kind of reaction one might expect if a white person had called a black person the N word in a public meeting.
“They could have put an end to this on day one if they had just looked at the video,’’ Fry said.
Her attorney had to subpoena the video, which Fry did not receive until three months later, in early December 2023. Neither the police, city attorney nor district attorney’s office that was brought into the matter ever requested the video, based on discovery documents from the lawsuit.
Coates also obtained a protective order that Fry have no contact with him. For some reason, Coates put the address of the DPS headquarters, where the board meets, as his own on the application for the protective order.
Coates was a regular attendee at board meetings. That meant Fry was banned from attending board meetings while the order was in effect.
The district also banned Fry from volunteering at her child’s school because of the criminal charges.
Several court appearances and processes occurred over the five months after the public comment meeting. The initial ordinance violation was elevated to criminal charges because Coates insisted that Fry grabbed his shoulder.
Charges were ultimately dismissed in January 2024 when the court viewed the video of the meeting that exonerated Fry of the assault charge.
“It’s so ludicrous that there is real racism going on in our city and instead this was just fabricated from nothing,’’ Fry said. “And the amount of effort and resources that were poured into that and they took it so far, is just mind-blowing.”
