Denver school board majority at stake in November’s election

The leadership and direction of Denver Public Schools is at stake in next month’s election as four Board of Education seats are up for grabs — enough to shift the seven-member body’s majority.

The high-stakes election has already generated more than $255,000 in campaign spending from political groups, a number that candidates and organizers expect to increase in the month that remains before ballots are due on Nov. 4.

The deep-pocketed Denver Families Action political group, which has charter-school ties, is hoping to complete the flip of the DPS school board that the organization began in 2023, when all three of its candidates won and unseated two union-backed incumbents. The organization is the political arm of Denver Families for Public Schools.

Candidates backed by the teachers union have controlled the board since 2019, but their grip began to erode in 2023. Four of the current board members were backed by the Denver Classroom Teachers Association when they won their seats, but now the union is only endorsing one of the three incumbents in the race. (Board President Carrie Olson is term-limited.)

Denver Families CEO Clarence Burton Jr. insists — as he did two years ago — that the city has moved on from the decades-old “reform” debate about school choice and charter schools. Instead, he and Denver Families Action’s allies and candidates say the DPS board is dysfunctional and unable to guide the district and improve student academic outcomes.

“This is a moment where the DPS school board, specifically, is historically unfavorable,” Burton said. “Will we move toward a board that is more transparent, that is prioritizing student outcomes and serving the teacher population? Or will we continue to have a situation where we’re sort of waddling in the midst of dysfunction and confusion about the direction we go in?”

Others, including union leaders, disagree that the reform fight isn’t at play in this election. The amount of money being funneled into the school board race is indication enough that DPS remains a battleground for policies that in past administrations have included the expansion of charter and innovation schools as well as the use of school closures to improve academic outcomes, they said.

“It is not true that people don’t care about this issue,” said Van Schoales, senior policy director at the Keystone Policy Center, a nonprofit that conducts education research. “DCTA wouldn’t be fighting as hard as they are, or Denver Families… they wouldn’t be as engaged spending (on the election).”

Eleven people are vying for the four board seats, and both Denver Families and DCTA are the main spenders in this year’s election, just as they were in 2023, when more than $2 million was spent between outside groups and candidates.

An independent expenditure committee called Better Leaders, Stronger Schools has spent $244,900 on digital and television advertisements for DPS principal Alex Magaña — who is running for the at-large seat currently held by Scott Esserman, who, in turn, is running to represent District 3 — according to the latest campaign finance reports.

Independent expenditure committees cannot work with candidates directly. Better Leaders, Stronger Schools receives most of its money from Denver Families Action, but others have also donated, including Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz, who gave at least $40,000.

Denver Families has endorsed Magaña, Mariana del Hierro, Caron Blanke and Timiya Jackson.

DCTA has given at least $10,668 to three of the four candidates the union is endorsing, including incumbent Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán. The teachers union’s independent committee, Students Deserve Better, has not yet spent money on the election.

The union has also endorsed Amy Klein Molk, DJ Torres and Monica Hunter.

Two incumbents — Esserman and Michelle Quattlebaum — are also seeking another four years on the board, but were not endorsed by the union despite receiving DCTA’s support in 2021.

The union isn’t backing Esserman and Quattlebaum because of certain positions they’ve taken, but the outcome of the 2023 election also changed who DCTA endorsed this year, union President Rob Gould said.

The union has advocated for smaller class sizes in schools for years, but Gaytán has championed conversations around class sizes more than her colleagues, he said.

“We’ve not seen enough focus around that,” Gould said.

In terms of individual fundraising, Blanke had raised more than $50,000, Molk more than $47,000, and Magaña more than $45,000, campaign finance reports as of Sept. 29 showed.

Incumbents Gaytán, Quattlebaum and Esserman have raised less money. Esserman has received more than $15,000 in donations, while Gaytán and Quattlebaum have raised more than $6,000 and $7,000, respectively.

Financial challenges ahead

Despite the money being spent on the election, this year’s DPS candidates aren’t talking about teacher contracts, school choice, charter and innovation schools, or other topics that date back to the district’s reform years, Schoales said.

“Those fights have always been incredibly intense, but I don’t see that playing out in how the candidates are talking about their objectives,” he said. “…It’s very hard to tell the difference between the candidates on their positions.”

This year, candidates and political groups are talking about how the Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to pull federal funding from K-12 school systems for diversity, equity and inclusion policies that the government calls discriminatory.

The federal government has come after DPS for its policies related to transgender students, accusing the district of discriminating against girls for having gender-neutral bathrooms at a handful of schools. DPS has also gone head-to-head with the Trump administration in court, challenging federal immigration policies in an effort to prevent officers from conducting raids inside schools.

“We should all be proud of the job that our district has done standing up to the Trump administration,” Burton said. “…We’re not just a district that is resisting those policies, but actually at the forefront of standing against them nationally.”

DPS is facing financial challenges other than the Trump administration’s threats to pull funding. K-12 enrollment is falling statewide, leading to less per-pupil funding for schools. The outlook for the state budget also isn’t looking promising with a nearly $1 billion deficit projected.

Additional school closures loom

How candidates approach potential school closures is important, given the financial headwinds DPS is likely to face in the coming months. Schools get less money when there are fewer students in their classrooms, leading to larger class sizes and fewer resources, such as mental health support and extracurriculars.

“What’s going to happen to our schools given the situation we are in?” Gould asked. “….Are we going to get people in here that are actually going to think about what we need to do for funding issues?”

The school board voted last year to close seven schools and restructure another three because of low enrollment. But board members were loath to do so, rejecting Superintendent Alex Marrero’s initial proposal in 2022, before finally voting to shut down three in 2023.

“It’s not an easy conversation to have, and there’s multiple things you have to consider,” Quattlebaum said.

The school board voted this summer to approve a four-year hiatus on school closures. Directors who supported the measure said it was intended to give schools and families a chance to breathe before another round.

Magaña criticized how the board has handled closures, saying the district needs a long-term plan on how many buildings need to close.

“We’ve known this problem for 10 years and still do not have a solution for it,” he said. “That’s the responsibility of the board.”

Esserman defended how he and his colleagues have handled school closures. The board can change the closure policy if Marrero tells directors that another round of school closures needs to happen sooner than four years, he said.

“The policy is not written in stone,” Esserman said.

‘Comes with the territory’

In the past four years, the DPS school board has gained a reputation for infighting that has largely focused on how to govern.

Most recently, board members scolded director John Youngquist, who was elected in 2023, for “behavior unbecoming of a board member toward DPS staff” and hired an outside attorney to investigate racial discrimination allegations.

Quattlebaum and Esserman pushed back on the notion of infighting, saying disputes are common when you have seven individuals with different personalities. “I’m not elected to win a popularity contest with my colleagues, but I am there to treat them with dignity and respect,” Quattlebaum said.

Critics have also questioned the school board’s decision earlier this year to extend Marrero’s contract for another two years and make it harder to fire the superintendent by requiring a “supermajority” of at least five members.

Marrero’s contract was set to expire in 2026 before the extension. Board members said at the time that they wanted to renew the contract to keep DPS leadership consistent amid federal funding threats.

Magaña was among a group of Latino community leaders and politicians who asked the board to pause the contract renewal until directors could review student academic performance. The board, he said, needs to do a better job at holding Marrero accountable.

If the superintendent is not meeting goals set by the school board, then directors need to decide whether it’s time to “move on,” Magaña said.

“He is doing the job that he’s been assigned to do,” Magaña said of Marrero. “He’s interpreting it the way he is interpreting it. The problem is not the superintendent… the problem is the board. The board did not do its job.”

Marrero, in an interview Monday, acknowledged that one of the primary jobs of the school board is the hiring and firing of the superintendent. The chance that a new board could terminate his contract “comes with the territory,” he said.

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