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The Denver school board censured Vice President Monica Hunter Thursday after an inconclusive investigation into whether she used antisemitic language.
The board voted 4-2 to censure Hunter, who denies the allegations. Hunter and board member John Youngquist voted no. President Xóchitl Gaytán, Amy Klein Molk, Marlene De La Rosa, and Kimberlee Sia voted yes, emphasizing the need to hold the board accountable, set a good example for the district’s 89,000 students, and move on from the controversy.
“It is absolutely okay to hold your own beliefs,” said Klein Molk, who is Jewish. “It is not okay to question other people’s beliefs. It is not okay to become obsessed with other people’s beliefs because of their religious identity. Our students deserve better.”
The allegation that Hunter used antisemitic language was the most serious of a slew of accusations that Gaytán levied last month against Hunter and board member DJ Torres. Torres resigned last week, saying the board spent too much time on “internal conflict.”
The board voted on Oct. 1 to hire an outside investigator to look into the antisemitism allegation, with a report due back in seven days. The seven-page investigative report was delivered to the board just hours before the censure vote Thursday. In it, the investigator wrote that the accusations “boil down to a ‘she said, she said, he said.’”
The report says that the strongest documentation the investigator found about Hunter’s alleged language was a note made by Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero after he met one-on-one with Hunter on January 27. Marrero’s contemporaneous note said Hunter “referred to Klein Molk as a ‘Zionist b...’ and said she did not want to sit next to her.”
In addition, Gaytán told the investigator that Hunter said, “I’m not sitting next to that racist bitch,” referring to Klein Molk. Gaytán also said that Hunter told her she wouldn’t vote for Klein Molk to be a board officer because Klein Molk “said she’s a Zionist,” the report says.
Hunter denied having said those things to Gaytán and Marrero, telling the investigator “there is no such version where that is true,” according to the report.
At Thursday’s meeting, Hunter said “there is no smoking gun” in the investigative report. She questioned why Gaytán and Marrero didn’t come forward with the allegations until after Hunter raised questions about Marrero’s continued employment as superintendent this past summer.
“We cannot claim to oppose discrimination while allowing baseless allegations to become weapons of political retaliation,” Hunter said.
Gaytán expressed remorse for the delay, saying she had hoped she “could ignore the bad behavior.”
Klein Molk said Thursday that a conversation she and Hunter had in early December about Israel, which is detailed in the investigator’s report, was “extremely hurtful.” Klein Molk said she found it “deeply offensive that my religion and my geopolitical beliefs should ever be questioned because of my Jewish identity.”
“I felt targeted for being a Jewish woman,” Klein Molk said. “And I forgive you.”
Hunter said it was upsetting to hear that she’d hurt her fellow board member. However, Hunter said, “disagreeing with someone doesn’t necessarily make them racist or antisemitic.”
Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.
