The Douglas County school board will hold a special meeting Wednesday night to formally begin the process of hiring a new superintendent, nearly two weeks after the deeply divided board narrowly voted to fire the top administrator in one of Colorado’s largest school districts.

The meeting is set to start at 5 p.m. Wednesday and will be livestreamed on the district’s YouTube page. The meeting will begin with two hours of public comment — the first time the public will be able to weigh in at a board meeting since Jan. 25; despite criticism from the public and members of the board, no public comment was taken ahead of Corey Wise’s firing on Feb. 4. Individual comments at Wednesday’s meetings will be limited to three minutes, as has become standard.

After public comment, the board will consider and potentially take action on three items related to the superintendent search, according to its agenda: the hiring process itself and a timeline to conduct it; a job description for the position; and standardized questions for applicants. At a regularly scheduled study session last week, board President Mike Peterson previewed the upcoming meeting and indicated the search would likely include public meetings to gather input from the community.

Wednesday’s meeting will represent the first formal action the board has taken to move on from Wise since its Feb. 4 meeting, when the superintendent — who’d been with the district for more than two decades — was fired on a 4-3 vote. That decision revealed the depth of the division between the dueling factions of the newly elected board majority and the longer-tenured minority. That three-hour meeting devolved quickly into the two factions accusing each other of misconduct and collusion, both within their respective camps and with outside groups. The meeting then turned into a public hearing on Wise’s performance, which was criticized by the new board members and defended by the longer-serving faction. 

The days leading up to that meeting helped super-charge those emotions: The longer-serving members accused Peterson and board Vice President Christy Williams of delivering an ultimatum to Wise — resign or be fired — without consulting them and after having individual discussions with their newly elected peers. The three older members then held their own public meeting to criticize that process; that was then followed by a coordinated protest by the district’s staff, so many of whom called in sick that the district canceled classes for a day.

The board will have to now find a way to come together — as members have said they want to do — to find not only a new superintendent but to continue to run one of the state’s largest school districts, which will deliver to taxpayers a sizable funding request this November. At last week’s study session, board members were told that they needed to come together if they had any hope of succeeding on Election Day. But it will not be an easy process: Peterson was scathing in his criticism for the board’s older faction during the Feb. 4 meeting, and Elizabeth Hanson — a member of that group — told Peterson and the three other new board members that she did not have an “ounce of trust” for any of them.

Already, there has been criticism of how the board’s leaders have handled announcing Wednesday’s meeting. The notice and agenda for meetings are supposed to be shared first with the board’s members. But David Ray — who was president until November’s election swept in a new majority — posted to Facebook late Tuesday night to report that he’d heard that a “select few community members” had received the “director-only notification” ahead of the rest of the public.

On a separate Facebook page, a Parker resident posted an email from former board member Steven Peck. In the email, Peck urged community members to attend the Wednesday meeting to support the board, and he said the meeting would be about the “superintendent decision and the path forward for the district.” Commenters on the post criticized the board’s leaders and wondered if Peck had received an advance copy of the agenda before it was posted publicly.

In an email Tuesday, district spokeswoman Paula Hans said board members and the public had been given proper notice about the meeting. Asked about the reports Ray referenced, Hans pointed to last week’s study session, in which Peterson previewed the upcoming meeting — which, at that point, did not have a set date — as being about the superintendent search. 

A message sent to Peck was not immediately returned early Tuesday afternoon.

Concerns about giving proper notice for public meetings and internal communications among the board have been central to the members’ internal conflicts. During the Feb. 4 meeting that ended with Wise’s firing, Ray alleged that the meeting had not been properly noticed 24 hours ahead of time. He and others also accused Peterson and the other three new members of breaking open meeting laws during their discussions around Wise’s future at the end of January, a charge that Peterson and Williams both flatly denied.

Last week, Peterson pledged to improve communications as a way to rebuild trust and help facilitate a reconciliation of the board moving forward.