Seeking to please President Donald Trump, the Justice Department has won indictments against three (and counting) of his political enemies, on the thinnest of pretexts.
Seeking to please Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero, members of his senior leadership team have contributed to the shaming (and possible defaming) of school board member John Youngquist, on the thinnest of pretexts.
The parallels are uncanny. The Marrero and Trump regimes have a lot in common. They just come from opposite ideological extremes.
Yesterday’s release of the investigative report into Youngquist’s treatment of district staff revealed that he hurt the feelings of senior staff and demeaned them by acting dismissively toward them, perhaps exhibiting racial bias. Almost all of the witnesses accusing Youngquist (a white man) of this behavior are Black.
This is a thorny thicket for a 69-year-old white man like myself to walk into. So let me start with the now familiar caveat that I have never walked in these people’s shoes. I cannot know what it is like to have to work twice as hard and endure many slights to rise to the top of an organization, simply because of the color of my skin.
Nevertheless, everything about this investigation stinks to high heaven. Whatever the final price-tag might be ($78,000 and rising at last count), it was a colossal waste of taxpayer money.
I’m not going to recap the findings here. You can read the report here, and a couple of media accounts here and here. Instead, I am going to lay out what seems to me a plausible scenario.
To begin with, this is a perfect example of what is known as a star chamber investigation. According to AI search engine perplexity: “A “star chamber investigation” refers to an inquiry or legal proceeding that is seen as arbitrary, secretive, and grossly unfair—often conducted without transparency, due process, or the right for those accused to defend themselves. The term is used pejoratively to criticize procedures that lack openness and seem designed to persecute rather than fairly adjudicate.”
While Youngquist was interviewed for several hours by investigators from the law firm Garnett, Powell, Maximon, Barlow & Farbes, those investigators, by their own admission in the report, refused to interview character witnesses proffered by Youngquist. They wrote:
“We did not follow up on statements by witnesses with secondhand information regarding interactions with Mr. Youngquist before he was on the Board or interview Mr. Youngquist’s character witnesses or other individuals to confirm his statements about his career. “We concluded evidence supporting or contrary to the allegations outside of the time Mr. Youngquist has served on the Board, except when a significant witness had a pre-existing relationship with Mr. Youngquist, was not within our scope and that if we broadened our investigation to include such information, we would have to do so fairly.”
This is absurd. Youngquist has worked in DPS and other Colorado districts for 35 years. He has a long track record and has worked with and supervised countless people, many of them of color, over that span. Surely their experiences with Youngquist are relevant.
But when a outcome is preordained, inconvenient truths are best avoided.
Youngquist came on the board with a clear voter mandate to push for change. He was part of the board minority, which made him unable to advance his agenda effectively. Instead, he did what any self-respecting public official would do: he demanded accountability.
That most of his board colleagues abrogated their duty makes Youngquist, as mild as his demands were (and they were mild), look heroic by comparison. But to a leadership team designed primarily to make its leader look good, Youngquist’s pushback felt extreme, and rude.
I wish other board members had joined in Youngquist’s push. Other than Kimberlee Sia, none ever did. That left him exposed, a perfect target for retribution.
It’s probably no coincidence that this report was released just a week before pivotal school board elections. Tomorrow, the board will meet and most likely will censure Youngquist. The three incumbents fighting for their political lives, will no doubt give impassioned speeches about their commitment to stomping out any embers of racism wherever they find them.
Here’s some other key context: Youngquist is likely to be a key witness in federal lawsuits filed against DPS by the two deans shot at east High School in 2023, as well as Kurt Dennis, a DPS principal fired for airing safety concerns publicly,
Youngquist, a former East principal, wrote several letters to Marrero before the shootings decrying the lack of coherent safety plans. This was before he was elected to the board, and he was even hired by the district through his consulting firm after the shootings to author a study about principal perceptions of school safety (or lack thereof). That report never saw the light of day.
In conclusion, perhaps Youngquist bruised some feelings by pushing hard for accountability. Perhaps some of the recipients of his criticisms and demands for information felt there were hints of implicit bias in his approach.
But let’s get real: That’s not what this investigation was about. It was a blatant attempt to silence one of the only voices of reason about the state of DPS who could be in a position to do something about it.
Election day is one week from, today.
Vote.
