Two Denver school board members have been accused of multiple policy violations by board President Xóchitl Gaytán.

In a meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 9, the long list of violations alleged against board member DJ Torres and a shorter, but potentially more serious list alleged against Monica Hunter were enumerated by Gaytán, and Hunter and Torres vigorously defended themselves.

Accusations of dereliction of duty by Torres, and antisemitic remarks, and conflicts of interest by Hunter surfaced. Once again the board is distracted, embroiled in feuds, and unable to do its job. Some allegations deserve prompt and thorough investigation, while others seem designed to distract and diminish two board members who have been outspoken in their criticism of Gaytán and Superintendent Alex Marrero.

In this episode, cohosts Alexis Menocal Harrigan and Alan Gottlieb discuss the latest imbroglio, and its implications for Colorado’s largest school district.

The Boardhawk Podcast — Season 2, Episode 22: The Denver School Board Is a Mess, Again

Alan Gottlieb: Hi, everybody. We are recording this podcast on the evening of Wednesday, September 9th, after a somewhat bizarre, last-minute, and important school board meeting earlier today. Late last week, the board president, Xochitl Gaytán, sent a letter to two board members — Monica Hunter and DJ Torres, both of whom were elected last November — alleging serious policy violations by both of them, of very different natures.

The DJ Torres allegations were basically about dereliction of duty — that he’s not showing up to meetings, he’s canceling meetings, he’s not doing his job as treasurer adequately, et cetera. The allegation against Monica Hunter, or at least the main one, is far more serious: that she used offensive, basically antisemitic language against another board member, another new board member, Amy Spurling Klemmer.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: And I don’t — and I’m sorry, I don’t know if they said Amy’s name. But as far as we know —

Alan Gottlieb: They didn’t say — well, the Jewish board member. That’s what’s been reported everywhere. Yes, yes. Right, and she’s the only Jewish board member.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: Yep.

Alan Gottlieb: So a lot of details are lacking. That’s one of the important things here. These allegations were presented at length in a very contentious board meeting today. President Xochitl Gaytán said that all the information was going to be put into an online folder for the board members to review, and then they’re going to talk about this again in eight days at the regular board meeting on Thursday, September 17th.

So there’s a lot to unpack here. We’re going to do it quickly. We’re not going to make this a super long podcast, but I have a lot of thoughts about this. I’ll let Alexis start, since I gave the intro, and get some thoughts about what happened tonight.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: Thanks, Alan. I’ve had some time to process it. I was able to watch the recording after the fact. First, my reaction is it’s really embarrassing that this is what the board is spending their time on.

Alan Gottlieb: Yes.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: I was really hopeful for a while there that this board was going to move beyond the interpersonal drama. I was really impressed — even though I didn’t support all of the new board members that were elected, or reelected in the case of Xochitl — I was really impressed with how they were showing up, how they were dealing with conflict, how they were managing board issues, particularly with the superintendent. And it’s just really disheartening that we’re falling into another situation where we have challenges that are interpersonal that are now spilling into the public view and are a distraction from what matters most: making sure our students are doing well in schools.

There’s a lot to unpack, and we’ll get into it, but one of the things — we’re just processing things so much that we’re getting into Robert’s Rules in these meetings, and it’s insane that we’re in these situations where it’s “You’re out of order. No, you’re out of order.” What is this theater?

And then the fact that it’s so bad that you have board members who are — for example, President Gaytán, who, to her credit, I think followed the policy well in order to move this forward. Now, if some of these allegations, specifically — and we might get into some of the specifics — are egregious enough that they’re truly violations of policy, that’s to me open to interpretation.

What we don’t know is where some of these allegations came from. We found out during the meeting some of it came from staff, some of it came from fellow board members. So it felt like President Gaytán was compiling information and then maybe working with staff to present all of these allegations against Director Hunter and Dr. Torres. But then as we got into, “Well, this meeting wasn’t duly — you can’t enact GP13 because —”

Alan Gottlieb: Let’s stop and define our terms. GP13 is governance policy 13, which governs basically board behavior and accountability.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: Yep. So this meeting, or this agenda item, was about GP13, and the first step in GP13 is to have a private conversation amongst board members. I think it was between the president and the person, and Monica made the argument, “Well, you didn’t have a conversation with me.” But then we found out Monica also doesn’t talk to people in person. She’s putting boundaries up that say, “You may only communicate with me over email.” And this is the last thing I’ll say right now: the fact that we have board members who are only willing to communicate with other board members via email — we’re done. We might as well phone it in now. Nothing’s going to get done if you can only communicate with board members via public meetings and email. That’s really disturbing.

Alan Gottlieb: Yeah, absolutely agree. It was kind of a ridiculous conversation in many ways about that. One thing I will say just in response — you said that she followed GP13 correctly. I think there is a question about whether the conversations were had first or whether it was brought forward first, and who’s to blame for whether the conversations happened or not. It’s not even worth spending time on, in my opinion.

I had really strong reactions watching this meeting, so I’m going to go through a few of them, and then we can go on. The first reaction is: more than one thing can be true. I think there’s a couple of different ways to look at some of this, and I think you can look at it both ways, is what I’m trying to say.

One is, when it comes to the allegations against Monica Hunter about making antisemitic statements, that’s a very serious allegation that — at least from what I’ve heard and what was said today — seems to be serious enough. There seems to be some credibility to it. It wasn’t invented out of whole cloth, but nobody knows what she said to whom or exactly anything else. So that’s a serious violation if true and needs to be investigated.

At the same time, it happens to be true that Monica Hunter and Dr. DJ Torres are two of the board members who have been most vociferously in opposition in recent weeks and months to the board president, Xochitl Gaytán, and the superintendent, Alex Marrero. So it’s very convenient that — in the same way that some of the same cast of characters made an attempt to marginalize Jon Youngquist by making allegations against him and then censuring him — these two board members are now being called to the carpet at this particular moment when, for a while, it really looked like the superintendent’s job was on the line.

It does in some ways look less like that right now, at least in the short term, than it did. But I think both things can be true. There could have been serious misconduct by at least one of these board members — potentially, possibly, allegedly — and this could be a cynical manipulation of the process by the board president and the superintendent to try and marginalize these board members and make them ineffective.

The other thing is that, as you said earlier, Alexis, this is embarrassing. It’s ridiculous use of time. I can’t believe the school board keeps getting in its own way, just tripping over itself over and over and over again. And they have these retreats — and this was brought up, I think, by DJ Torres in his comments — they go round and round in circles, and they say they’re going to follow up on these conversations they had in these retreats, at which he said $30,000 has been spent, and then nothing happens. It’s just kind of a waste of time.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: I took a screenshot because I was doing a little bit of Googling earlier today. This is the headline from the Denver Post article on August 18th: “Denver School Board Gets Vulnerable, Works to Restore Trust During Daylong Retreat.” And you have this really nice image of Monica, DJ, and Amy sitting there. Credit to Elizabeth Hernandez for writing this piece. It’s just — this was two, three weeks ago, and here we are, not even a month later.

Alan Gottlieb: Right. So it’s just ridiculous and embarrassing, and we’re back to saying the board’s dysfunctional because the board is dysfunctional. And it’s absolutely getting nothing done that matters at the moment, it seems to me.

The reason for this — and I’m not going to call people out by name necessarily — but I would say this board needs strong leadership, and no one is stepping up of the seven. Nobody’s stepping up. Xochitl’s the president, but her leadership is abysmal. I’ve been on the record as saying this a bunch of times. She’s basically serving the same role with Alex Marrero that all of the minions of Donald Trump serve him. It has nothing to do with what’s best for the district, and it’s all about what’s best for Alex Marrero as far as I can tell. So that’s not good. But I would say that the other board members are either too deferential or too timid or too tired, too non-confrontational or whatever. And so nobody’s taking a leadership role. There’s a lot of yelling going on and assertiveness — DJ Torres, in particular, does a lot of that — but there’s no leadership. I just don’t see any leadership by anybody. And I think somebody somehow has to just step up and take control of the situation. They can’t be the president of the board, I’m not saying that. But there needs to be some sort of a way of coalescing, and if they can’t coalesce, then this is a board that needs to be changed at the next election again, unfortunately. I’m just dismayed.

The last thing I want to say is, again, the Monica Hunter allegations are serious and need investigating. The allegations against DJ Torres — the more I listened to him and looked at them — seem like, “Let’s throw a whole bunch of stuff against the wall and see what sticks.” And I thought he made a very good self-defense at the end of that meeting, where he basically said, “How I use my time is my own business. This is a part-time, poorly paid” — it used to be a non-paid position — “I have a family and I have a job, and I shouldn’t have to bow and scrape every time the board president makes a change or wants my attention. I have other pieces of my life, and I take this seriously, but it doesn’t mean I have to do it the way you do it and have to respond to every outreach from you,” talking to Xochitl Gaytán.

So I feel like the Torres allegations are really fabricated and ridiculous, and I’m more troubled — and maybe it’s because I’m Jewish — by the Monica Hunter allegations, and really believe there needs to be some serious looking into whether some of this happened or not.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: Yeah. Thanks, Alan. I wrote a couple of things down just so I wouldn’t forget them, because some of the things you said raised items for me. Working backwards from the comment that DJ made at the end — I agree. It’s times like this, and I think about the amount of time that is spent or is needed to be spent to do this job well, it’s times like this I’m really grateful that I never won my election in 2019 to sit on the board, especially as a mother and a full-time working professional. It would be impossible. I don’t know how you do it as somebody with kids, as somebody with professional responsibilities outside of the board. So I do tend to agree with DJ, and that’s where it gets a little bit more complicated, and I don’t think it’s helpful to get so in the weeds here.

Should you be available for meetings that help you govern well? Yes. But can the meetings become excessive? Also yes. And does it mean you are doing a dereliction of duty if you don’t attend all of the one-on-one meetings? I don’t think so. But at some point, you also need to be available enough to get the information so that you’re prepared for the meetings and not wasting other people’s time.

What you’re saying resonates with me, especially some of the things that DJ got accused of — I’m like, “This is bullshit.” For example, there was an allegation in there about how he at the last minute had to cancel a policy governance retreat in Canada that he was going to attend, and the allegation is, “You wasted taxpayer dollars by not attending this meeting,” to try to show there’s a pattern of behavior of you not tending to your schedule and responsibilities. Then we found out — because I read it beforehand — actually everything was reimbursed except for the registration, which I’m assuming was not refundable. But then he said he got the materials from the conference and has been using them. So to me, as a taxpayer, I’m not upset that maybe a $10,000 registration was not reimbursed even though you got the content that you needed from the event.

So that’s one. Putting that alongside potentially hate speech are two very different things. I’m struggling that this was all put in one package. As somebody listening in, I’m having a hard time reconciling this as a package when some of this is ridiculous and some of it is — if this is serious, there needs to be an investigation, there needs to be some sort of formal process. I don’t know what you do with hate speech. Would Amy or the board or somebody have to put that forward?

What I’m struggling with is: who’s coming out ahead and who’s losing here? The kids are losing. The teachers are losing. The work that needs to get done is not getting done because of this, right? Because board members can’t talk to each other one-on-one and are putting up boundaries that you can only communicate with me via email — that’s crazy. Or I’m sorry, that’s weird.

And then who’s coming out ahead? This is where my conspiracy theory comes in. We have to be very careful about these allegations. Alan and I are insiders, so we’re hearing things from different members of the community. Alan, as he mentioned, is Jewish, and I have a lot of friends who are in the Jewish political class, I would say. It’s a small community. As we think about this, this is very serious, and people are asking, “Where is this coming from?” Some people are saying to me, “Is this the superintendent fabricating this stuff?” I don’t know. I have not seen evidence of what is true, but if this were made up, that is — to me, that’s a fireable offense. If somebody were to make something like this up, that person should not have a job if they are an employee of DPS. If somebody were to lie about antisemitic behavior, particularly against a woman of color on the board — fireable immediately.

I think about who comes out ahead from doing this, and it does remind me a little bit of what Jon Youngquist experienced, Director Youngquist, about 10 months ago, I think, with his censure on racial insensitivity bias. He was making comments that made staff members and leaders of the district uncomfortable — staff members of color. If you’re doing that to John and that was proven unsubstantiated, some of it, and then you censured him — to Xochitl’s credit, she’s taking it just as seriously. And this is where I think, Alan, you and I can disagree. I appreciate that this was done as professionally as could have been done given the circumstances. I don’t know a better way it could have been handled. Should it have been brought up? Yes. Was that the right way to bring it up? I can’t think of a better way other than separating it, but then we’re spending more time on this. To me, hate speech should be its own separate investigation. Very serious allegation. The other components, which is you’re not meeting your requirements of a board member, is totally different, and I’m struggling to reconcile that.

The last thing I’ll say: I think the superintendent is probably happiest right now because his job is safe. Because as long as this continues, you have two board members who want to fire the superintendent, I assume, in Directors Hunter and Dr. Torres, and then the rest who right now are not showing any signs of getting rid of him.

Alan Gottlieb: Well, I think Jon Youngquist would probably be a third.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: Oh, sorry. I know — Jon, where are you at? Come on the podcast and let us know.

Alan Gottlieb: Yeah. I agree with what you said about hate speech, and you said it would be a fireable offense if somebody made up those allegations. What would be the appropriate punishment for a board member if it was found to be likely true?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: Resign. She should resign.

Alan Gottlieb: So —

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: If it is proven true — first of all, she should apologize. Put out a public statement. If she doesn’t have to post a press release, fine. But if it is proven true, and I want to be really careful — this is in the court of public opinion right now, and I’m recognizing that Alan and I have this platform, and we have a responsibility to not create further rumors. We are just talking about what happened at the board meeting and what we know to be true. We do not know that any of this was true. And I hope that it is taken seriously enough that it is investigated. But if it is proven not to be true and you find out who was lying — fire. If it’s proven to be true, I would publicly call for her resignation.

Alan Gottlieb: It’s probably going to be he said, she said. I don’t know. Unless there’s stuff in writing or recorded, it’s going to be hard to prove. Proving is hard. I heard one thing in the board meeting today that got my attention, and I’m not going to give a lot of editorial comment other than to say when Amy Spurling Klemmer, who is the alleged target of some of this speech, talked — she said during her remarks, “We have a responsibility to have a certain decorum. Disagreements are a beautiful thing and we should be disagreeing.” But then she said, “We need to model how people can disagree without hatred, demeaning one another, or losing sight of their shared humanity.” I just thought the fact that she said that — that just got my attention. That’s all I’m going to say.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: As you’re saying that, the sun is coming through. I don’t know if you can tell. For those of you watching on video, the sun is setting in my window and it’s just creating this glow. Like a little angel coming in there. The timing was interesting, as you’re saying those beautiful words and repeating Amy’s. It’s an impossible position right now. I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of each of the board members.

Alan Gottlieb: By the way, really important — I meant to say this: Monica Hunter vociferously denied these allegations today during the board meeting.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: Oh, thank you for saying that. She said that they’re baseless and false. So we have innocent until proven guilty, absolutely. And that’s why there needs to be more than just reading a bunch of stuff in a folder. They probably, once again, need to spend taxpayer dollars on hiring somebody to actually investigate and go out and interview people. If you were to look at the last eight years, how much time we’ve spent on investigations, outside counsel, board retreats to deal with interpersonal conflict — it’s got to be well over a million dollars.

Alan Gottlieb: And like I said, what a waste of time. And yet, unfortunately, in some cases, necessary — parts of it are necessary. But the board is not able to function as a board right now, and it’s hard to see when they’re really going to be able to at this point. I just don’t know.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: I’m curious of your thoughts, Alan, because as I think about the interpersonal — to me it doesn’t rise to the… Other than the hate, if antisemitic comments are proven to be true — apart from that, if you are not causing harm and you are not doing something that is creating the conditions to make the board work continue forward, I don’t know that it’s worth opening these public forums for this. Now, GP13 allows for a process to do this, but I was reflecting with a friend earlier today on the phone, and they were sharing with me their view. What I was struggling with, out loud, was: I don’t know when you cross the line. I don’t know when DJ’s actions are — well, as a board colleague, I might not be happy with him because he didn’t show up to the meeting. As a parent in DPS, I actually don’t really care that much about that piece. But when DJ’s actions create barriers to my student being successful or cross into the public domain — like if DJ were to show up at a school and yell at a principal — to me that’s, okay, now there needs to be a process. But if it’s, oh, he was kind of an asshole to another board member — I don’t care. It’s between them. Go be adults and figure it out.

This person said to me that it is that public space — it’s when you go from private, closed-door conversation, interpersonal, to the public domain as an elected official and it’s creating harm and ripple effects, that’s when it has to be investigated. I thought that was a really good way of putting it, because some of DJ’s stuff, I’m like, who cares? But other things, I’m like, okay, that could matter. And similarly with Monica — some of the allegations made against Monica seem kind of petty and unnecessary. The two that stood out to me were obviously the antisemitic comment, but then also the one that crosses into the public domain is the conflict of interest with CEA. For those who don’t know, CEA is the statewide Colorado Education Association, the statewide teachers’ union. Monica is an employee of the CEA, and apparently there was a vote two or three board meetings ago where Monica didn’t abstain, which created a conflict of interest. To me, that is something that taxpayers should be aware of if there is that conflict and it’s a public vote. But the rest of it, I’m not sure it rises to this level.

Maybe the intent was — because there were so many allegations or frustrations, it allowed for it all to come out at once, because any one of those individually, again with the exception of the antisemitic comments, may have felt petty and not relevant. But when you combine them all, I think maybe they’re trying to show a pattern of behavior.

Alan Gottlieb: That’s what they’re trying to do, no doubt. And again, that’s the part of it that makes me cynical and suspect there’s ulterior motives on the part of Xochitl Gaytán and the superintendent.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: And this is where I want to give Xochitl the benefit of the doubt, and I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me on this. She’s in a very difficult position. I will say I’ve noticed she has been — coming out of the last board retreat, I do feel like she has really been trying to work better with her colleagues, taking ownership, taking accountability, slowing down, letting them — I hate to say it, like DJ kind of walks all over her sometimes. I’m like, “I would not put up with that bullshit.” And in a way she sort of — I hate to use this word about another woman — softened her approach.

Alan Gottlieb: Her affect.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: Her affect. Yes, thank you. And I do think she’s trying. And again, I think she’s put in an impossible position. Going back to your comments about leadership — I want to talk about soft power and who holds true power. Xochitl holds the true power. I think what you’re describing, Alan, is we don’t have anybody with soft power on the board that’s able to really influence and change the direction. What you have is these very siloed types of leaders who are trying to work as a collective, but some aren’t. I think there’s a distinct difference of opinions from board members about: are we one, or are we individual members? I think they would all agree they’re independently and duly elected, but they’re supposed to act as one board. Not everybody agrees with that. By the way, I don’t agree with that — I think disagreeing well is really important in democracy.

I just want to say, given the circumstances, I think Xochitl has handled this as well as she could, being put in a very difficult position. I don’t think she holds a lot of power or influence in being able to sway public opinion or the board, but I think she is doing the best she can given the cards she has been dealt. Some of it I think is her own creation or the board’s own creation, but I want to give her credit. I don’t really see the superintendent stepping in — maybe it’s not his role because he’s not a board member. But I’ll give some kudos to Xochitl.

Alan Gottlieb: Okay. I will let this podcast end on that positive note and not rebut you, even though I don’t necessarily agree.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: That’s fine.

Alan Gottlieb: Like I said, more than one thing can be true at once.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: Well, let me ask you — I know we want to wrap, but how would you have wanted to see things done differently?

Alan Gottlieb: First of all, I would bring to the board — after a concerted effort to really have that conversation, which is the first step in the process of this policy — I would bring to the board the serious allegation, because it seems to have come from multiple sources from what we can gather, and investigate that and leave everything else out of it. That would probably be how I would handle it. I think we haven’t mentioned — and I really think we should wrap up — but some of the allegations against DJ are that basically he’s not doing his job as treasurer. He isn’t preparing treasurer’s reports or attending meetings of the audit and finance committee. If that’s true, he shouldn’t have been treasurer if he doesn’t have time to do that stuff, or that’s not where his priorities are. But is that the level of a policy violation that needs to be called out in a board meeting? I don’t know. So to me, I would separate out the really serious thing from the stuff that seems less so, and that’s what makes me cynical — that it was all brought up together.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: The last thing I’ll say is I don’t want to dismiss the fact that Monica did call out what she believed or felt like anti-Black behavior. And Monica specifically called out the fact that she is the only Black woman on the board.

Alan Gottlieb: Only Black person of any —

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: Yeah, she’s the only Black person on the board. I’m struggling with — what am I trying to say here? I appreciate that there’s not double standards happening, where John had to deal with something that then Monica didn’t have to deal with. And if we go way back to Auontai Anderson, who was on the board, who was the last person to be censured before John Youngquist was censured —

Alan Gottlieb: And no one had ever been censured before that, by the way.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: That’s wild. I don’t agree, but I also don’t have the lived experience of being a Black woman and the only person of color on a school board. I just want to say I can’t imagine what it would be like.

Alan Gottlieb: There are two other people of color on the school board.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: True, true. She’s the only Black individual on the board. The others are Latino or Latina. And there’s other types of diversity on the board. I don’t know what it’s like to be a Jewish woman in today’s day and age, with a lot of antisemitism and the incredible polarization of the politics in the Middle East coming out into our politics in the US. I want to just acknowledge I can never imagine what it’s like to be Amy or Monica or, for that matter, DJ, an openly gay Latino man. I don’t know anybody’s lived experience. Even Xochitl and Marlene as fellow Latinas — we all have different experiences. I just want to say: just because an allegation is made against somebody and that person is a person of color does not mean it is anti-Black. Using that logic, you can never criticize a Black person in leadership or power. There are plenty of Black people who I criticize. That doesn’t make me anti-Black for criticizing them because of what they say or have done, their actions. I just want to be really careful when we start throwing out the term “anti-Black” and acknowledge I don’t know what it is like to be a Black woman on a school board.

Alan Gottlieb: I really don’t have anything to add to what you said because I think you said it really well, other than — AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, recently said “woke” was crazy. I think an example of that would be you can’t investigate somebody who might have said something really bad because of what their race and gender is, you know? Obviously it needs to be investigated. It’s not necessarily anti-Blackness. Monica may have experienced a lot of other stuff on the board that feels to her like anti-Blackness. And I, like you, even more so as a 70-year-old white Jewish guy, I can’t live in her shoes at all. But I would be cautious about using that as a way to try and deflect an investigation, if that’s what’s going on.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: I don’t think it is. Well, I think on that — there’s a lot of things that are left unknown, unresolved. As we mentioned at the top of the hour, the way that this is going to proceed forward is the board members will all have access to a drive where all the — they said the word “evidence.” When I heard the word “evidence,” I was like, “Oh, that’s uncomfortable.” Because it’s like, are we in a court? It feels like a court of public opinion.

Alan Gottlieb: “Documentation” would have been a more elegant term.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: I think it was Xochitl, President Gaytán, who said “evidence” and then she changed it to “documents.” It’s like, “Well, there’s going to be a folder with the documents.” So that may have been a Freudian slip there or something. The board members are being asked to review that ahead of the September 17th meeting. What I’m not sure will happen is if a vote of censure will occur. That is my guess — that they’re going to call the vote. But maybe not. Maybe they’re going to push it further and they want to ask for an investigation. I don’t know. So more to come, and I’m sure you’ll hear more about it on the Boardhawk podcast.

Alan Gottlieb: Great. Thanks, everybody, and we will be back again soon with another — let’s hope more enlightening — conversation.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: Bye, everyone.

Alan Gottlieb: Bye.