Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.The Denver school board voted Thursday to hire an outside law firm to represent it in legal matters involving the superintendent, whom the board is responsible for hiring, firing, and evaluating.The vote comes at a tense time for Superintendent Alex Marrero and the school board, who met recently behind closed doors to discuss their working relationship.The board will hire the firm Holland & Knight, which has locations across the country, including in Denver. The board could also ask the firm to conduct investigations or offer a second opinion on complex matters previously reviewed by the school district’s lawyers.A contract hasn’t been finalized. But board member Kimberlee Sia said at the meeting that the cost was below the $250,000 threshold that requires the district to put a contract out for bid.The district put out a request for proposals anyway, Sia said. But no law firms responded.Instead, Sia said she reached out to firms to ask if they would be interested in the job. Of the two that responded, she and board President Xóchitl Gaytán chose Holland & Knight, Sia said.The board voted unanimously to hire the firm without any substantive discussion. The topic has generated debate in the past. Sia first proposed a policy on when and how the board should hire an outside lawyer in June 2025. Her thinking, she said, was to avoid conflicts of interest regarding the superintendent’s contract and performance evaluation. Instead of having the school district’s general counsel represent both the board and the superintendent, Sia proposed each side should hire its own external attorney.Gaytán pushed back on the proposal, arguing that it could displace Denver Public Schools General Counsel Aaron Thompson and policy governance attorney Marcus Johnson, both of whom are people of color. She noted that Marrero is also a person of color.The board passed a slimmed-down version of Sia’s proposal in October. Gaytán was the sole no vote. The policy, called Governance Process Policy 18, says the board’s outside lawyer should report directly to the board president, who is currently Gaytán.Marrero has expressed concerns about the arrangement. In a June 8 letter in which he outlined how he believes the board is overstepping its bounds, the superintendent wrote that he was “compelled to reiterate concerns regarding any efforts to create structures that function as a parallel legal advisory system separate from the District’s General Counsel.” He wrote that such a move could “risk creating perceptions of retaliation, undermine established reporting structures, and further complicate governance responsibilities.”The relationship between Marrero and the board has grown more tense since Marrero applied for an open position in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. He didn’t get the job.Marrero and the board met in a three-hour closed-door session late last month to discuss the superintendent’s concerns and his contract, which says he’s entitled to a year’s salary if the board terminates him without cause. Marrero earned $346,529 this past school year. The two sides emerged from that meeting pledging to continue to work together. An attempt by some board members to call a subsequent meeting to discuss Marrero’s employment didn’t garner enough support to be scheduled, the Denver Post reported.Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.
