You can listen now to our latest Boardhawk Podcast episode, either by clicking on the embed below or through your preferred podcast service.
In this episode, Alan Gottlieb and Alexis Menocal Harrigan interview former McAuliffe International School Principal Kurt Dennis and his attorney, renowned civil rights lawyer David Lane. The searing conversation touches on events that led up to Dennis’s firing in 2023, the federal lawsuit Lane has filed on his behalf, and scurrilous accusations hurled at Dennis by current and former Denver school board members about Dennis’s use of a deescalation room for students in crisis. See background information below the embed.
On March 24, 2023, Kurt Dennis, then a principal of McAuliffe International School in Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood, decided to speak to a reporter for 9News about safety concerns at his school. McAuliffe was a high performing, in-demand, diverse school. Dennis was a highly regarded veteran principal, widely considered one of the top building leaders in the district,
His decision to speak to a reporter occurred the day after a student at nearby East High School had shot and seriously wounded two deans during a security pat-down. Dennis faced a similar situation at his school where a student charged with serious, violent crimes was being patted down daily by school staff, who had received no training in the technique. Frustrated by the district’s lack of response to his pleas for intervention, Dennis decided to air his concerns publicly on a local TV newscast.
What happened next is a somewhat long and definitely sordid story to be summarized only briefly here. At the beginning of the 4th of July weekend that year, presumably hoping to avoid undue media attention, Denver Public Schools fired Kurt Dennis. The stated reasons for his firing were divulging confidential student information and a pattern of administrative actions that had a disparate impact on students with disabilities and students of color.
Dennis’s attorney David Lane is a prominent civil rights attorney and partner at Killmer Lane, LLP in Denver, Colorado. Lane, with over four decades of legal experience, has represented clients in numerous high-profile cases, specializing in civil rights litigation and criminal defense, and has argued before the United States Supreme Court.
Lane filed a federal lawsuit against the district and six school board members in September 2023, claiming, among other things, that Dennis’s first amendment rights were violated, and that he was defamed by inflammatory statements made by several board members. DPS filed a motion to dismiss which, after a long delay, a judge rejected late last year. So the case moves forward.
