The Denver metro chapter of the Colorado Latino Forum filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Wednesday against the Denver school board and its president because there are no Latinos in the running to replace Nate Easley, who resigned in January.
The Colorado Latino Forum is asking the OCR to:
- Add a qualified Latino to the finalist pool before the March 18 appointment deadline.
- Conduct an investigation to determine whether there has been a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
- Facilitate a mediation meeting between the parties in an attempt to obtain voluntary compliance.
- Initiate enforcement action, either by referring the case to the Department of Justice for court action, or by initiating proceedings before an administrative law judge, if voluntary compliance fails.
The three finalists for the seat – selected by an anonymous voting and ranking system by the six sitting board members – are Landri Taylor, head of the Denver Urban League, Taggart Hansen, a lawyer, and Antwan Jefferson, an educator who specializes in urban education. All three are African-American.
DPS Board President Mary Seawell said Thursday the district had not received legal notice of any complaint. Furthermore, Seawell said, district legal counsel told her the OCR does not have jurisdiction over the board appointment, a process that is outlined in state law. A spokesperson for the OCR was looking into the matter.
“We are going forward,” Seawell said of the process to fill Easley’s seat. “This has been a fair and open process.”
The board is scheduled to attempt to pick the new board member to represent District 4 in Northeast Denver at a meeting today. The deadline for filling the seat is Monday under a 60-day deadline set by state law. Also under state law, a school board president has the authority to make an appointment if the board cannot come to consensus.
The complaint argues that because more than half of District 4’s 28,800 students are Latino, a Latino community member should represent them. Of the remaining students, 27 percent are black and 16 percent white, the forum says.
“We claim specifically that qualified Latino candidates were excluded by an arbitrary and capricious process within a school district that is comprised of nearly 60 percent Latino students,” a news release issued Wednesday by the forum said.
The group asserts that qualified Latinos have been intentionally and discriminatorily excluded from the finalist pool.
The organization points out that none of the nine early finalists from a pool of 25 contenders were Latino.
However, a review of the first round of secret ballots cast by board members in which they were asked to rank their top three picks from the pool of 25 found that none of the six board members, including the board’s two Latino members – Andrea Merida and Arturo Jimenez – selected a Latino candidate to rise to the next level.
But the Colorado Latino Forum asserts that Barbara Medina, former assistant commissioner for Innovation and Transformation at the Colorado Department of Education should have made the cut.
“Today political favoritism has been the determining factor in the BOE appointment process resulting in board members failing to take into account the rapidly growing Latino student population, a majority being English Language Learners or Spanish bilingual speakers,” the complaint states.