Inside Secret Binders Dougco School Board Members Fought to Hide

For months, the four majority members on the board of education for the Douglas County School District waged an expensive court fight to prevent the release of training binders they'd used during "a secretive 'retreat' in Estes Park" after being elected in November 2021 but before being sworn into office.

A complaint filed by Douglas County resident and District 43 state representative candidate Robert Marshall suggested that the binders essentially provided a game plan for how the conservative bloc of Mike Peterson, Becky Myers, Kaylee Winegar and Christine Williams could skirt Colorado Open Meetings Law while engineering the February 4 firing of superintendent Corey Wise, as well as the March hiring of retreat attendee Erin Kane, his handpicked replacement.

Late last month, the 18th Judicial District DA's Office confirmed that Peterson and Williams were under investigation for possible perjury regarding their testimony during a hearing about Wise's firing.

On July 28, with court proceedings looming, Marshall revealed that the district had suddenly given him the material it had battled so energetically to conceal — even though its contents don't contain any obvious smoking guns.

The binder document, accompanied by an index and a note about a nearly five-year-old email that hadn't been provided, is a 225-page compendium of articles, social media posts and court documents, many of them pertaining to topics close to the hearts of conservative educational reformers, including critical race theory. Also included are some boilerplate guidelines to the board meeting process and general policy, plus contracts for Wise and former legal counsel William Trachman, a past official with the U.S. Department of Education, presented without additional comment.

This random assortment of information appears to have been intended to spur conversation, but it doesn't offer insight into what was actually said at the Estes Park meeting — and in a July 28 letter to "BoE Members (who are not under criminal investigation)" that was shared with Westword, Marshall admits to being baffled by the latest turn of events.

"I am at a loss regarding why the DCSD has now turned over ALL the material I requested in the 14-Day letter that was served March 28, 2022," he wrote. "You immediately hired Hall & Evans," a Denver-based law firm, "to respond to my CORA 14-Day letter and have now wasted thousands of dollars...to simply turn over everything I demanded from the beginning. That does not pass the smell test for transparency, fiscal responsibility, nor ethics."

Westword has reached out to the Douglas County School District and former Colorado Secretary of State

Marshall hasn't had a chance to conduct a detailed examination of the binder documents, but he's puzzled as to why there isn't more about Colorado's sunshine laws, since Williams had publicly referenced it, as well as the decision to redact the five-year-old email: a note from Trachman to "Directors" sent in November 2017 under the subject line "Email Leung-Peck Seat."

In his letter, Marshall asks, "Is this a privileged email sent to the DougCo BoE in 2017? And if so, did the Board waive the privilege over it so that Mr. Trachman could present it to the incoming board members BEFORE THEY WERE SWORN IN AS DIRECTORS?"

And a bigger question remains — why the district went to such extremes to prevent the public from looking inside these particular binders.

Scott Gessler of Gessler Blue Law, which currently represents the four conservative boardmembers, has not responded to Westword's request for comment about the binder's release. But the Douglas County School District offered this statement: "Mr. Marshall brought a lawsuit against the District under Colorado’s Open Records Act in order to get copies of the binders which the District asserted were not public records. As the judge ruled in this lawsuit, Mr. Marshall did not meet the burden of proof that materials referenced by incoming Board of Education directors, prior to being sworn in, should be considered public records. The judge was correct in his statement that this would be akin to library books someone had prior to entering public office being shared out as public record. For these reasons, the District did not release the binders under CORA back in March. The binders were released to Mr. Marshall in the context of the discovery process in another lawsuit he has brought against the District under the Open Meetings Law, a separate matter."

Click to read the training material from the 2021 Douglas County Board of Education Estes Park retreat.

This post has been updated to include a statement from the Douglas County School District.