In the midst of a nationwide push by parents for more say over what’s going on in their schools, Colorado school districts are going the opposite direction, doubling down on secret meetings and backdoor deals and stonewalling urgent requests for information from the very people they are supposed to serve.

If it weren’t for the efforts of media outlets to force these districts to reveal some of the important discussions and decisions happening behind closed doors, students and parents would be even more in the dark than they are.

The appetite for the truth is so strong right now that Denver Gazette education reporter Nico Brambila has tallied 105 Open Records requests that 22 Denver media outlets have filed for information from Denver Public Schools since March 22. These requests cover everything from public safety plans, weapons seized, incidents of violence and decision-making by board members. Despite the declared public policy of the state “that all public records shall be open for inspection by any person at reasonable times,” we’re still waiting to hear back on most of our requests.

Our requests include things I’d sure want to know if my son or daughter were in a DPS school:

• The text of DPS’s current school safety plan for teachers and administrators
• The district’s policies for “Student interrogations, Searches and Arrests”
• The number of students under a safety plan and being patted down for possible gun possession each day at Denver schools
• The number of weapons detected on DPS campuses in the last five years broken down by type of weapon. 9News asked for photos of those weapons.
• The number of students expelled for weapons violations in the past five years.
• The number of students on probation and the reasons for that probation.

Reasonable requests, right?

Yet not only are school districts resisting the release of information that could make students and parents feel safer, they may be breaking the law in the way they are hiding information.

After more than five hours in executive session — meaning closed to the public — to discuss security in the wake of the recent shooting at East High School, the Denver Public Schools Board of Education emerged with a memo reversing its policy on no cops in schools.

Steve Zansberg, a First Amendment attorney in Denver and president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, said the decisions made during the session broke the law.

“It is a clear-cut violation of the open meetings law,” Zansberg said. No big decisions like returning cops to schools can be made unless the meeting is public.

Several media organizations, including the Denver Gazette, are in the process of suing the DPS board for the full recording of the DPS Board’s executive session and for failing to notify the public of what would be discussed in that session.

More than a thousand parents of children at East High School have formed an ad hoc committee to demand more transparency and responsiveness from DPS and its board as well.

The DPS fight is just one a number of flashpoints around the state in which school districts are resisting urgent pleas for better transparency.

• In Douglas County, fired superintendent Cory Wise just won a settlement of $832,722 for wrongful termination after four elected officials met secretly to decide to fire Wise, rather than making the decision in an open public meeting as required by law. In deliberations during another lawsuit over secret meetings, Douglas County District Court Judge Jeffrey K. Holmes noted that “the hiring and firing of a school district’s superintendent is clearly a matter of public business.”

• The STEM School in Highlands Ranch where Kendrick Castillo was killed while trying to disarm a student who opened fire in his classroom in 2019 is fighting to keep Kendrick’s parents from releasing confidential documents and depositions from the shooting. Kendrick’s parents have asked a judge to make those depositions public because they believe what they will reveal will “shock the conscience of the public, and will force urgently needed school safety changes.”

• In Woodland Park, a Teller County District Court judge recently ordered the Woodland Park school board to comply with the Colorado Open Meetings Law “by clearly, honestly and forthrightly” listing future agenda items regarding a charter school’s application to the district. The injunction was the result of a lawsuit brought by a Woodland Park parent claiming the board hid consideration of the charter school under a “Board Housekeeping” item on its agenda.

The board also recently issued a gag order for all teachers, forbidding them from talking to the press.

Sometimes we journalists feel like our school boards think this is Russia and they can do whatever the hell they want.

Why are these school districts so damn secretive? I suspect there is some intellectual vanity at work: We school administrators know better than you do about school business and how it should be conducted.

But in the end public schools are just that … public. Students and parents have a right to know what these public officials are doing, and that what they are doing is best for students, not for administrators and teachers. A public school, since it is paid for by taxpayers, must by law conduct its business in the open.

The state Supreme Court succinctly stated the need for open-government laws in a ruling back in 1983: “A free self-governing people needs full information concerning the activities of its government not only to shape its views of policy and to vote intelligently in elections, but also to compel the state, the agent of the people, to act responsibly and account for its actions.”

That is why it is so disheartening that Colorado school officials, with the backing of the courts, are rejecting demands for transparency and sunshine from parents who no longer feel their schools are safe for their children.

What’s worse, what are our schools teaching our kids about telling the truth?