In 2021, then-Denver school board member Auon’tai Anderson was censured after a district investigation found he’d aggressively pursued inappropriate relationships with underaged students and intimidated witnesses.

That didn’t stop Scott Esserman and Michelle Quattlebaum from hiring Anderson, through his business Good Trouble Consulting, to run their campaigns for DPS board seats that fall. Nor did it stop them from voting to make him board vice president afterward — or hiring him again for their current reelection bids for the board on this fall’s ballot.

But when Esserman and Quattlebaum ran before, the teachers’ union backed them both. This time, the two have lost the union’s endorsement — and its money — as the union makes a tactical retreat.

Chalk it up to a pattern of poor judgment. In 2022, Esserman joined Anderson in publicly humiliating a Manual High JROTC instructor, falsely blaming him for a district decision and accusing him of racism in front of students and parents.

“I didn’t even know who these two individuals were until they introduced themselves and started attacking me,” the instructor told me. “After 50 minutes of being berated, I thought, ‘Is this okay?’”

Not at all. Esserman proudly flouted board policy. 

“We’re not supposed to be currently involved in operational decisions,” he said. “But to hell if I’m gonna stay silent when I see something going on!”

Campaign manager Anderson continues such malicious antics in the current races. This week, he outrageously attacked a female critic of Esserman and Superintendent Alex Marrero on Facebook,

“I pray that everything your ancestors did to mine comes back on your entire bloodline for 10 generations,” Anderson wrote.

In 2023, amid debate over restoring school resource officers, Quattlebaum hijacked Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas’s briefing with an 18-minute diatribe. When President Sochi Gaytán cut her mic, Anderson stormed down, berated staff and dared Gaytán to arrest him. Civil-rights activist Alvertis Simmons called out the board for the “clown show.”

It didn’t stop there. Esserman and Quattlebaum are now driving a crusade against fellow board member and Secretary John Youngquist, burning more than $78,000 on an investigation into extraordinary claims of staff mistreatment. Their attack comes after Youngquist had criticized the board for violating open meetings laws.

Denver’s school board repeatedly failed open-meetings rules and exhausted public trust, even handing Marrero a cushy contract extension with more job protections — months before evaluating him under new metrics he helped craft. And on it goes.

No wonder the union ditched the duo for DJ Torres and Monica Hunter. For Esserman and Quattlebaum, the financial hit is brutal. Last cycle, they each pulled between $57,000–$67,500 in monetary and non-monetary contributions from the Colorado Education Association and its local affiliate, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association.

This time, without union backing, they’ve raised just $19,000 and $7,400 total (plus $6,100 Quattlebaum started with).

Worse, most spending goes straight to Tay Anderson. Esserman has paid him $10,003 (72% of total expenditures) and Quattlebaum has given $2,500 (53%), with an eye-popping 32% of hers going to delinquency fees with the secretary of state.

Talk about losing your mojo while subsidizing an ex-colleague who booted himself from his own seat on the board — after a scandal-ridden tenure and a 9% approval rating. That’s doubling down on disaster.

Since the 2023 shootings at East High, Marrero hasn’t truly addressed school safety. His revised disciplinary guidelines still tie schools’ hands, refusing to let them remove violent students. Meanwhile, he’s fought multiple school-safety related lawsuits, including several cases brought by former staff.

DPS touts an “historic” 79% graduation rate and “accredited (green)” status — even though the district’s score barely squeaks by at 57.6%, and four in 10 schools remain stuck with improvement plans or worse. Only 26% of Black and Hispanic students in K-8 can read at grade level. Among high-schoolers, just 42.3% are proficient in reading and writing, with just 21% meeting math expectations.

Let’s be clear: Marrero and his merry data-spinners keep flouting accountability to parents, kids and the public on achievement, safety and transparency. Anyone in the public who has been following all the antics has to be fed up by now. 

The Nov. 4 election will give parents and other voters a chance to turn out the status quo and elect candidates willing to join change-minded board members Youngquist and Kimberlee Sia. They were elected two years ago as part of the parent push for school safety.

Only one incumbent running for reelection, Sochi Gaytán, retains union support. When she was board president, Gaytán earned kudos for being the lone adult willing to occasionally challenge Anderson, Esserman and Quattlebaum.

But she’s championed Superintendent Alex Marrero and his outrageous contract extension. She’s defended DPS’s failed attorney, Aaron Thompson, who’s enabled the board’s secrecy for years, including the shady way Marrero’s contract terms were developed.

Interestingly, the union’s checkbook signals the tide may be turning against its own ilk.

Contributions to its four candidates (Gaytán, Torres, Hunter and Amy Klein Molk) total just $48,139 — a far cry from the $242,000 the union spent in 2021. That was when Esserman, Gaytán and Quattlebaum individually drew more than this year’s entire union slate combined. This year’s union campaign contributions, by comparison, amount to little more than saving face.

In truth, there are six union candidates in this election, not four: the newcomers the union just endorsed and the incumbents they previously installed — who helped create this mess — and to whom the union is now giving the cold shoulder. That’s called buyer’s remorse.

With an open seat left by term-limited President Carrie Olson and three incumbents on this fall’s ballot, Denver voters have the chance to send a clear, unequivocal call for something better — completing a clean sweep they began two years ago.

Only then will the board finally realize the genuine mandate to prioritize safety, boost academic achievement, restore transparency, clean house in district leadership and finally put students — and the teachers who support them — first.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.