When three future members of the Denver Public Schools’ Board of Education took to the debate stage at Regis University a month before last year’s election, they faced a crucial question about the management of Colorado’s largest K-12 district.
Did they think Superintendent Alex Marrero was doing a good job?
Two of the soon-to-be directors — Amy Klein Molk and Donald “D.J.” Torres — largely kept their opinions about Marrero close to the vest, while Monica Hunter levied criticism without revealing whether she would seek to replace the superintendent before his contract ran out in 2028.
“He’s doing a fine job,” Torres said during the October debate. “Is there more to be done? Definitely.”
Now, nine months into the job, Marrero and the new school board members — who have the ability to sway the seven-member governing body’s majority — are struggling to work together as a lack of trust pervades DPS leadership, fueling speculation that Marrero may not be long for the superintendent’s job.
Matters could come to a head as soon as Monday, when the board has a special meeting scheduled. Directors plan to gather in closed session with an outside attorney to discuss their “legal rights and obligations in connection with the superintendent contract,” then bring in Marrero to discuss the board’s relationship with him, according to the agenda.
Marrero himself called the situation “increasingly untenable” in a June 8 letter to school board President Xóchitl Gaytán, complaining that directors are overstepping their authority when it comes to DPS’s day-to-day operations.
Meanwhile, board members question Marrero’s commitment to the district as well as the timing and intent of the superintendent’s letter, which Marrero sent just before revealing to the board that he had applied for a job in Miami.
“I’m not going to tolerate having someone with one foot in and one foot out,” Molk said in a recent interview. “I have been concerned since he was looking for a job in Chicago last year. I thought that we had put that to rest, and now that it is coming up again makes me question his commitment to Denver.”
Board members interviewed by The Denver Post declined to say whether they are considering firing Marrero or are looking to negotiate a separation agreement with him. Such a decision carries a price tag of at least $346,529, and voting to terminate him without cause would require a supermajority of at least five board members.
In interviews with The Post, directors didn’t dismiss the possibility that Marrero’s time at the district may be coming to an end, a notable difference from their predecessors who repeatedly extended Marrero’s contract and were known to heap praise on the superintendent when they faced calls from community members to replace him.
“Once this conversation unfolds, I think, everything should be an option like it always is,” Torres said of Monday’s meeting. “It’s our right as a board to question our superintendent’s leadership and accountability to DPS, so I’m willing and very ready to have that conversation.”
Marrero declined an interview request, saying “it would be inappropriate for me to discuss these matters with the media when I have yet to have the opportunity to engage with the Board of Education directly.” He also declined to answer a list of questions sent by The Post.
Gaytán declined an interview request as well, but said in a statement that Monday’s meeting will enable board members to address the concerns outlined by Marrero in his June letter.
“This approach ensures the full board and the superintendent can participate in a constructive discussion focused on governance, accountability and maintaining the strong working relationship necessary to serve Denver Public Schools and its students,” she wrote.
Different opinions on the board’s role
DPS superintendents are employees of the school board, which in turn has the authority to extend their employment or fire them.
Board members are elected officials with term limits who don’t always have a background in education or in running a $1.5 billion operation with just under 90,000 students and thousands more employees. But they have constituents who voted them into office, often because they want the new directors to enact change to the school system.
This dynamic automatically makes it challenging to build trust between district staffers and board members, said an employee who works in DPS’s central office downtown — one of two administrative staffers who spoke to The Post for this story on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation.
“There’s this deficit of trust, and we have four years to get (school board members) on board,” the employee said. “…There are some new voices on the board, well-intentioned, but not necessarily respecting the operational model (of the district).”
The district’s governance model is supposed to help define the roles of the superintendent and school board. Under the model — called policy governance — directors are supposed to set goals they want the district to achieve rather than issue directives to the superintendent.
The method is supposed to give Marrero flexibility on how to achieve what board members want while avoiding micromanaging — which is the reason policy governance was implemented in the wake of Superintendent Susana Córdova’s resignation in 2020.
Former Denver mayors Michael Hancock and Federico Peña wrote a scathing letter after Córdova’s resignation, blaming the school board for mistreating the superintendent during meetings and interfering with the day-to-day management of DPS.
Marrero has a strict interpretation of policy governance, meaning he believes the actual running of the district is off-limits to individual board members and that directors are overstepping their authority by wanting to wade into things, such as student literacy and school operations, he wrote in his June 8 letter.
“…I remain concerned by continued discussions and actions that appear to move the board further into operational matters than policy oversight,” the superintendent wrote.
Molk said she mostly agrees with Marrero’s belief that the school board’s job is to set the vision of the district and hold the superintendent accountable. If implemented properly, she said, the governance model should give the superintendent the autonomy he needs to do his job.
But, she said, board members also have constituents they have to answer to. “That’s where the real frustration lies as a board member: having the best intentions and, then, it’s like you’re overstepping by talking to community and relaying it back,” Molk said.
Hunter, who was also elected to the board last year, called DPS’s implementation of policy governance “an extreme interpretation” that has turned the school board into a policymaking body, like a legislative office, rather than one that is focused on literacy rates and parents’ concerns.
“I do think that, maybe, having a board that expects a little more accountability has been challenging,” Hunter said.
One example of how Hunter views her role differently than Marrero is in her office hours at schools, which the director holds to talk with teachers and other employees. She takes any concerns she has heard during those visits to the superintendent, according to both Hunter and the central office employee.
District staffers believe Hunter’s school visits are an overstep and conflict of interest because she holds the office hours as part of her job as the director of human and civil rights with the Colorado Education Association — the state’s largest teachers union — but also serves as the school board’s vice president.
Hunter disagrees.
“I will talk to anyone who wants to talk to me who is in my district,” she said. “…I want to make sure the role I hold is accessible.”
In his June 8 letter, Marrero accused board members of not speaking to each other, canceling meetings because they don’t like the other director present and what he called “a litany of ongoing interpersonal issues.”
“This is why I have characterized the current trajectory as increasingly untenable,” the superintendent wrote.
‘I don’t trust his commitment to Denver’
Both central office employees who spoke to The Post pushed back on assertions that the superintendent has checked out of the job, saying that Marrero is moving forward with trying to get a $44 million mill levy override on November’s ballot and expanding career and technical options for students.
But, they said, Marrero feels like he’s being pulled in seven different directions by board members who want to wade into operational matters.
“If the situation continues, it would be hard for him to stay,” one of the employees said. “I think the job he likes, I think the work he likes. I think there’s some frustration around the board’s treatment.”
In his June email to Gaytán, Marrero said the board violated his contract by not following policy governance and by initially excluding him from an executive session — which is closed to the public — earlier this year. Marrero’s contract, which the board renewed last year, states that he and the board will operate under the governance model, meaning that “the board will avoid telling the superintendent or staff what to do or how to do it.”
The email is notable because if the board decides it no longer wants to use policy governance, Marrero’s contract allows him to end his employment with the district. In such a scenario, he is required to give the board a 30-day notice before resigning, raising questions about whether the superintendent intended to place the board on alert with his email last month.
“It could be this is just a kerfuffle and he sticks around,” said Van Schoales, senior policy director at Keystone Policy Center, a Colorado nonprofit that conducts education research. “But I think it’s highly unlikely he’s going to be here in a couple of years. The question is, does he make it to the fall?”
Likewise, if the board wants to terminate Marrero’s employment without cause, it is required to provide him with a 60-day notice before scheduling a vote and pay him a severance with an entire year’s salary as well as his retirement and other benefits.
The board and Marrero could also reach an agreement to separate at any time, according to his contract.
Board members said they called Monday’s meeting despite being on their annual July break to discuss the superintendent’s concerns.
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Directors want to better understand “the plausible pathways and outcomes that might occur” under Marrero’s contract, board member John Youngquist said.
“He has represented an interest in some sort of separation,” he said of Marrero. “The board has not had a conversation that is related to that. All of this has happened since the board met last, so we haven’t been able to engage in these conversations.”
Directors have hired an outside attorney, Kristen Edgar, to advise them during the meeting. The board has a policy that prevents the district’s general counsel from representing the board or superintendent in legal matters between the two, including when negotiating his contract.
The policy was put in place so that directors can hire a third party when there is a conflict of interest involving the district’s legal counsel, who reports to the superintendent, and an item presented to the board, said member Kimberlee Sia. She declined to comment about the board’s meeting and Marrero’s future.
The board is still working to find a permanent outside attorney to hire, so it contracted with Edgar, who it has worked with before, for Monday’s meeting, Gaytán said.
In interviews, board members acknowledged the trust issues between themselves and the superintendent. Several said they are questioning whether Marrero wants to stay at DPS, considering he recently applied for the superintendency at Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida, a move that came less than a year after he was a finalist for a similar job in Chicago.
“I don’t trust his commitment to Denver,” Molk said.
Marrero failed to become a semifinalist for the Miami position, which the Miami Herald reported was because the Denver superintendent did not have experience teaching in a classroom. Marrero hinted in a statement that he believes he didn’t get the job because of his support of immigrant students and LGBTQ pupils.
In November, Marrero was a finalist to become Chicago Public Schools’ next CEO before withdrawing his name after news of his candidacy leaked. The superintendent has insisted he did not seek out the position himself.
“I never applied for the superintendent position in Chicago,” Marrero said in a statement to The Post. “I was approached by the search firm and asked to speak with them about the job. I did speak formally with members of the search committee and board. To be clear, I did not seek out this position and proactively removed my name from consideration.”
A New Yorker in Denver
Marrero, 43, has faced criticism from educators and others in Denver ever since he was hired in 2021 to succeed Córdova.
A group of Latino leaders and other community members didn’t think the East Coaster understood the American West and Chicano culture enough to lead DPS. They also thought Marrero was inexperienced at running a large school district when he was hired.
Marrero, a native of the Bronx, previously served as interim superintendent for the City School District of New Rochelle in New York before moving to Denver.
“Dr. Marrero should never have been hired by DPS in the first place,” said Peña, the former mayor and frequent critic of Marrero. “…He was not prepared to come to this very significantly larger school district that was far more complex.”
Marrero’s critics say test scores and literacy rates for students of color aren’t where they should be. Some still question whether Marrero ever adapted to Denver, saying he hasn’t done enough to build relationships with mayors, City Council members and other community leaders.
“He doesn’t care about the outdoors,” Schoales said. “He’s not a hiker. He doesn’t drive a Subaru.”
Marrero has also found himself at odds with school board members and city officials over school closures and armed police in schools.
“This was a big job for him and, I think, there have been wins for him for sure,” Molk said. “But one thing I don’t think he’s ever effectively succeeded at is managing the board.”
Past and present board members, including Gaytán, are among Marrero’s supporters. They say the superintendent has traits that make him an ideal leader of DPS, a liberal district where more than half of the students are Latino: Marrero is Afro-Latino, bilingual in Spanish and a strong advocate for improving equity for students of color.
Marrero’s gone head-to-head with the Trump administration by suing the federal government to prevent immigration raids in schools, and defied the U.S. Department of Education’s order to convert gender-neutral bathrooms into restrooms for girls.
Last year, DPS students’ test scores and graduation rates earned the district one of the top ratings available on the state’s academic framework for the first time since 2019.
“From day one, he faced criticism challenging his legitimacy,” former board member Auon’tai Anderson said about Marrero. “…He’s never got a fair shake here.”
Marrero has also been able to win over community leaders, such as the Latino Education Coalition. Hancock, whose tenure as mayor overlapped with Marrero’s, also disagreed with the assertion that the superintendent hasn’t built relationships in the community.
“I’ve seen him work tirelessly to build relationships,” Hancock said. “…We had a chance to really work on things when there were difficult decisions we had to make. I’ve always appreciated that about him. We had a good working relationship.”
Unexpected alliances
DPS school boards are known for their members’ big personalities, public infighting and micromanaging of superintendents.
But the conflict taking place now has somewhat surprised education insiders who expected the members of the board’s majority to be more supportive of Marrero given they weren’t the candidates openly criticizing him during last year’s election.
All four of the candidates elected to the school board last year were technically on the same side as they were all backed by the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. Gaytán, a known supporter of Marrero’s, was the only incumbent re-elected to the board last year.
Of the three new members, Hunter was the most critical of the superintendent during the election.
“We see the data. We see that our Black and Latino students are not performing,” she said during the October debate. “We see that some of the dysfunction has gotten in the way of putting students first.”
Instead, alliances on the new school board have formed across the old union vs reform battle lines. The three new members have sided more frequently with Youngquist than with Gaytán when voting this year.
Youngquist was elected in 2023 and his campaign was backed by a deep-pocketed group that supports charter schools and other education reform methods.
The board’s majority and its leadership are “often at odds,” Torres said.
“There’s… 6-1 votes with one person being the outlier consistently throughout those votes,” he said. “Just not with the alignments that we were told that we would have.”
“Some of the trust that the collective board has with the superintendent is muddied because of various relationships (Marrero) has with board members,” Torres added.
Gaytán supports Marrero as superintendent, while Youngquist and the superintendent have historically not gotten along.
Marrero has accused Youngquist of wanting his job, ignoring board protocol and of directing district staffers. The superintendent also requested that the board censure — or formally reprimand — the director for his behavior to employees. The former school board did just that last year after an outside investigation found Youngquist’s behavior to be “belittling, dismissive and condescending” toward DPS staff.
Youngquist, in turn, has accused DPS leaders, including Marrero, of retaliation.
The new DPS board has “a much more objective look” at the superintendent and his leadership than past boards, Youngquist said.
“We have a board that is more connected and more engaged together… than I’ve seen in a long while,” he said. “…The new board members coming on are less interested in conversations that are divisive and are truly focused on conversations that are inclusive and engaging together and focused on the needs of our children.”
Marrero sent a second email to Gaytán in July, imploring the board to operate within the district’s governance framework. This time, his complaints were levied solely against Youngquist, who had asked the superintendent to send him districtwide discipline data, test scores and attendance information broken down by grade levels and student groups.
The superintendent, who noted he was on pre-approved time off, took issue not only with Youngquist’s request — which he called “substantial” — but the fact that it was made during the board’s yearly sabbatical in July, according to his email.
Under the district policy, the superintendent can refuse individual board members’ requests for information that he believes take up too much staff time or are unreasonable, Marrero wrote in his email. The data, he said, is already scheduled to be presented to the board in the coming months.
“Finally, if the board’s historical July practice or expectations regarding my availability and staff responsiveness during pre-approved time off have changed, please let me know,” Marrero wrote. “I should not be left to infer a shift in expectations from a series of individual director requests accompanied by unilateral deadlines.”
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