The Douglas County School Board Just Got Even More Conservative

During a March 22 meeting that ran nearly eight hours and didn't conclude until the early part of March 23, the Douglas County Board of Education, in the biggest surprise since the sun rose in the east, voted to hire the controversial Erin Kane to serve as superintendent for the Douglas County School District. Kane will replace Corey Wise, who was fired on February 4 by the four-member conservative bloc of Peterson, Kaylee Winegar, Becky Myers and Christy Williams elected in November 2021.

Even though Kane clearly had majority support for the superintendent gig, fellow boardmember David Ray — who, along with Elizabeth Hanson and Susan Meek, had opposed Wise's pink-slipping — backed Danny Winsor, the only other finalist for the position, characterizing him as the less divisive option. But a vote on that proposal lost by what has become the typical 4-3 margin.

Kane, a former DCSD interim superintendent contacted by Peterson regarding the superintendent gig even before Wise's dismissal, is a Republican, and while she tried to downplay party affiliation during her public interview process, her hiring is clearly part of the hard-right turn executed by the majority members. Peterson and company struck down masking policies supported by Wise but opposed by Kane during her most recent gig as executive director of schools for American Academy, a large Dougco charter.

The hiring of Kane wasn't the only action taken during the meeting. The boardmembers also added a new counsel to the legal team defending them against a lawsuit filed by Douglas County resident Robert Marshall: Gessler Blue Law, the namesake firm of former Colorado secretary of state Scott Gessler, who last year ran unsuccessfully to head the Colorado Republican Party. Among Gessler's previous clients was the campaign of former president Donald Trump, which hired him as a "testifying expert" in support of election challenges over fictional fraud claims in Nevada and Pennsylvania and retained him for a similar role related to pre-election lawsuits in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Vermont.

Marshall's suit argues that Peterson, Winegar, Myers and Williams violated Colorado Open Meetings Law in the way they engineered Wise's ouster, and an 18th Judicial District Judge granted a motion for a preliminary injunction based on the prospects for the claim's success.

During a special meeting earlier this month, Hanson branded the notion of spending what would likely be a large amount of taxpayer dollars fighting this ruling as "absurd," and the revelation that the district's insurance carrier had denied coverage for such a battle in February seemed to bolster her viewpoint. While the Douglas County School District hasn't responded to Westword's questions about how these costs would be covered, Dougco did announce that Gessler Blue Law would work at a discounted rate alongside Hall & Evans LLC.

Word that Gessler would be joining the district's legal team has been circulating for several days, and on March 22, Marshall addressed the issue in a letter to boardmembers. During his stint as secretary of state, Marshall pointed out, Gessler was cited by the Independent Ethics Commission, and his two appeals, including one to the Colorado Supreme Court, both failed. "Given that this board's own integrity is now questioned, it seems a very peculiar choice to decide to use, out of the thousands of attorneys in the state, one who had such high-profile ethical violations when the BoE and its four new members have already been found to have engaged in illegal and unlawful conduct by a court," Marshall maintained.

Continue to watch the full March 22 meeting of the Douglas County Board of Education.