Author’s note: I wrote the op-ed below over the weekend, then had a conversation with Colorado’s top media lawyer Sunday evening that prompted me to put a newsy topper on it. Here’s the news:
Board member John Youngquist was publicly pilloried by his board colleagues last week in part for insisting that an executive session they held last month was illegal.
But according to Colorado’s preeminent media law attorney, Youngquist is right and the law firm the board hired to offer an opinion on the matter erred in saying the meeting was legal.
The board “blatantly violated” the Colorado Open Meetings law on Dec. 12 by not specifically publishing in its official meeting notice that the executive session discussion focused on Youngquist’s request for reimbursement for penalties levied against him by the state pension fund, lawyer Steve Zansberg said Sunday. The notice language was far more general, depriving the public of information it was entitled to know, Zansberg said.
Zansberg is no stranger to the DPS board and its skirting of open meetings law. He successfully sued DPS for holding an illegal executive session in March 2023, the day after two deans were shot at East High School. Thanks to Zansberg and other attorneys, a Denver District Court judge ordered the release of a video recording of that illegal meeting.
In the current case, although the board received a letter (linked in op-ed below) from the law firm of Caplan and Ernest asserting that last month’s executive session was legal and properly noticed, Zansberg disputed that assertion.
It would ultimately be up to a judge to decide the meeting’s legality Zansberg said. But the executive session clearly violated the law in Zansberg’s view.
He also pointed out that Caplan and Earnest regularly represents school boards and defends their positions, so it was no surprise they took the opposite view. The firm regularly does work for DPS as outside counsel.
Told Sunday evening about Zansberg’s view, Youngquist said his interest remains in ensuring that board members have “clarity and confidence” they abiding by open meetings law in their notices and minutes. As board secretary, he is responsible for the accuracy of meeting minutes, he said.
And here’s the op-ed.
After struggling to process the reprimand Denver school board member John Youngquist received from his six colleagues during a meeting last week, I’ve come to the conclusion that it amounted to much ado about very little.
What’s more, certain board members might want to look in the mirror before chastising a colleague for treatment of Denver Public Schools staff.
Two issues led to Youngquist’s reprimand: A letter he wrote to board President Carrie Olson that accused the board of holding an illegal executive session last Dec.12, and his allegedly insensitive treatment of senior district staff.
One of the topics discussed during the Dec. 12 executive session was, as officially posted, “a conference with the Board’s attorney to receive legal advice on specific legal questions regarding board member compensation and PERA rules impacting PERA retirees.”
PERA, the Public Employees Retirement Association, is the state pension plan. Without getting into the weeds, Youngquist had requested reimbursement from DPS for penalties he incurred from PERA for exceeding the allowable number of paid hours he worked as a board member.
While that request might have been ill-advised, that’s not what caused the controversy. Youngquist was told he could not attend the portion of the executive session where his PERA benefits were discussed, and was asked to leave. He wrote that he believed his exclusion violated the state’s open meetings law, as did the meeting notice’s failure to be sufficiently specific about the topic of the meeting. He wrote a pointed letter to Olson stating those objections.
An outside lawyer hired by DPS disagreed with Youngquist and said the meeting was legal.
But board members apparently believed Youngquist and the public should take one lawyer’s opinion as the gospel truth. Perhaps they confused a lawyer’s opinion with a judge’s ruling. As Zansberg told me, the matter is very much open to dispute.
You’d never know that from listening to board member Scott Esserman last Thursday night. “I’d like to hear from director Youngquist tonight an acknowledgement that the board did not violate open meetings laws, that our attorney did not violate open meetings laws, and that that that claim based on whatever it was based on, was mistaken,” Esserman said. Youngquist, wisely, did not make any such acknowledgement.
What apparently upset board members was that Youngquist wrote that letter in the first place. During last week’s public flogging, each of his colleagues said writing the letter instead of speaking with other board members individually to air his concerns constituted a violation of trust and a breach of board policy.
Protecting the board’s tattered public image
“Your accusations directed at me and (DPS General Counsel Aaron) Thompson and all of our colleagues violates (the policy) that states board members will take no individual action that could compromise the integrity of the board or DPS,” Olson said at the meeting. “These accusations compromise our integrity and makes it challenging for us to strengthen our board as a governing body and its reputation to the community in the future.”
This sounds like concern that Youngquist, even by airing his objections in a private letter, might make the board look bad. As if image is more important than substance.
On one level, I understand what board members were doing here. From 2021-23 the board, with some different, highly problematic members, was riddled with infighting, backbiting, and all manner of bad and unprofessional behavior. Since three new members were elected in November 2023 (Youngquist among them), much of that very public dysfunction has receded.
But by blowing this relatively minor issue into a public display of high dudgeon, board members regressed to previous patterns of behavior.
Perhaps I am missing something, but Youngquist seems well within his rights to have written the letter to Olson expressing his concerns. Even if in the end they were unfounded, Youngquist’s objections stemmed from his belief that the board was playing fast and loose with open meetings law. Given the board’s recent history with violations of that law, he had every right to be concerned.
Incumbents running for reelection escalate the situation
If the public pillorying had stayed focused on this issue alone, it would have seemed little more than an unnecessary bit of drama. But board members Esserman, Xóchitl Gaytán, and Michelle Quattlebaum decided to escalate, by also bringing up Youngquist’s allegedly unprofessional and harsh treatment of DPS staff, specifically Thompson and Chief of Staff Deborah Staten.
Both Thompson and Staten are Black, and Youngquist is white. The Denver Post quoted from an email Thompson wrote to Youngquist last March saying that Youngquist’s criticisms of him for repeatedly failing to provide requested information reflected racial biases.
“I invite you to explore any unexamined biases you may have concerning interacting with District staff, who also happen to be people of color,” Thompson wrote.
It’s unclear what Youngquist might have said to Staten early last year that offended her, because she has not come forward with any allegation. Reportedly, she told Quattlebaum, who also is Black, that Youngquist had something to her that made her uncomfortable.
As an older white man, I am not going to wade into this thicket. I have never walked in Thompson’s or Staten’s shoes. I’m not qualified to weigh in how they should perceive their interactions with Youngquist.
But I do not hesitate to question the timing and motivation of Esserman, Quattlebaum, and Gaytán bringing this forward as 2025 dawns.
Both alleged offenses took place at least 10 months ago. Youngquist said he has since had a sit-own over coffee with Thompson to discuss their disagreements. So why bring them up now?
It’s worth noting that at a public meeting exactly one year before last week’s meeting, Esserman lost his cool during a debate over the fate of the Academy 360 charter school and publicly reprimanded staff, raising his voice and repeatedly slapping the table. “Do your jobs and figure this out!” he said, among other things.
No one called him out for his behavior.
Bringing up those staff complaints at this point feels like piling on, at the start of an election year when Esserman, Quattlebaum, and Gaytán are up for reelection. They have few accomplishments to run on from their three years of board service, and much for which they should be held accountable.
Stagnant student achievement and perpetually yawning achievement gaps represent a significant part of their legacy, as do dangerous lapses in school safety directly tied to policies they supported.
This smells like an early attempt to distract from that record by reverting to an old playbook.
Or am I being overly cynical?
