The Denver Public Schools (DPS) Board of Education went behind closed doors Monday to discuss Superintendent Alex Marrero’s contract and future with the district after he asserted the board failed to follow the policy governance model outlined in his contract.

The dispute became public around the time Marrero notified board members he had applied for the top job in Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

The executive session was placed on the agenda to address Marrero’s June 8 email to Board President Xóchitl Gaytán in which he raised several concerns about the board, said Bill Good, a district spokesperson.

Among Marrero’s concerns:

• The board overstepping its governance role and failing to evaluate itself.
• Contract violations involving an executive session in which he was excluded.
• Too much board involvement in operations.
• Board dysfunction undermining his leadership.
• Hiring outside legal counsel.

As board president, Gaytán controls the board’s agenda.

Gaytán, who has twice served as president during Marrero’s tenure as superintendent, said the policy was first adopted in 2021 before she came on the board. The board has not yet established how or when a self-evaluation would be done.

“It’s something I’m trying to get the board to agree on,” Gaytán said. “We’re just not quite there.”

She did not respond to a phone call Monday seeking comment on Marrero’s complaint that the board had not conducted its own evaluation, as policy requires.

Unlike last year, when the board relied on DPS General Counsel Aaron Thompson, who reports to the superintendent, to review Marrero’s contract, it turned to outside counsel Monday. Kristin Edgar led the executive session discussion, Good said.

The school board does not have its own legal counsel.

The board had sought to create a policy outlining when it can hire its own attorney, which sparked debate over whether the measure undermines the district’s Black general counsel.

Before the policy was drafted, Gaytán called it racist and said doing so would undermine the board’s governance and send “the wrong message to our staff, our DPS staff, our DPS community, by stripping away the duties from our very first Black general counsel.”

Gaytán also called hiring outside counsel — which the board has done on occasion — wasteful, duplicative and unnecessary.

The policy has not been formally adopted.

In his email to Gaytán, Marrero also complained of a “growing erosion of the governance boundaries” over the past year, saying the challenges he has faced have been “exacerbated” by newly elected directors unfamiliar with the district’s policy governance.

“Governance is learned through experience, and there is a natural learning curve,” Marrero wrote. “However, the solution cannot be to operate outside the framework while learning it.”

Moments before Monday’s executive session, those tensions surfaced publicly when Director DJ Torres interrupted Gaytán with a point of order after she criticized directors who attended virtually.

Torres argued Gaytán did not speak for the entire board, though board policy designates the president as the board’s spokesperson. The exchange echoed a similar procedural dispute in March, when Torres interrupted proceedings with a point of order, prompting the district’s general counsel to consult “Robert’s Rules of Order” during the meeting.

‘I can no longer ignore these concerns’

Over the past two election cycles, voters have ousted all of the board’s incumbents except Gaytán, who represents southwest Denver.

Three of the board’s seven members were sworn in in December.

Marrero also singled out veteran board member John Youngquist, with whom he has clashed publicly, writing that Youngquist expressed “enthusiasm” about a proposed literacy policy while the board devoted comparatively little discussion to the district’s budget, one of its core governance responsibilities.

“Respectfully, I can no longer ignore these concerns,” Marrero wrote.

Tensions between Marrero and Youngquist predate the current governance dispute.

Last year, the board voted 5-1 to censure Youngquist after Marrero accused him of vying for his job and acting with “racial insensitivity” toward district staff.

A censure is a public reprimand for policy violations or unethical conduct. It does not remove an elected official from office.

An investigation found no evidence of overt racism but cited complaints about Youngquist’s criticism of the district’s graduation rate as “not good enough” and his failure to clap when Marrero was named superintendent of the year.

When forwarding Marrero’s June 8 email to the board, Gaytán wrote that she had “privately addressed several violations with board members” and had “formally notified the Superintendent of these corrective actions.”

After repeatedly denying rumors he was pursuing jobs with other districts, Marrero confirmed to the board that he had been “recruited” for the Miami-Dade County Public Schools search.

Marrero has not explained what he meant by being “recruited.”

“This is not a decision I made lightly and is not one intended to diminish or disregard the great success we’ve shared in DPS during my tenure,” Marrero said in a June 9 email to the board.

The Miami-Dade position drew 21 applicants. Marrero did not make the shortlist.

During his tenure, Marrero has faced a string of controversies, including his handling of the East High School shooting, school closures, a nearly $100,000 corner-office renovation and annual cost-of-living increases he received while denying the same to teachers.

Marrero also asked the Board of Education to discuss the return of school resource officers in executive session, a meeting a judge later ruled was illegally held behind closed doors.

Under Marrero’s leadership, the district has touted a return to pre-pandemic academic performance levels. Critics, meanwhile, note that most DPS students still fall short of meeting state expectations in math and English, raising questions about how the district defines success.

Before coming to Denver, Marrero served as interim superintendent of the City School District of New Rochelle in New York, which serves fewer than 10,000 students.