Dougco School Board's "Absurd" Debate About Appealing Judge's Motion

Update: A Douglas County Board of Education special meeting scheduled for today, March 11, was expected to focus on whether the panel's president, Mike Peterson, should be the sole person to decide how to respond to a lawsuit against him and fellow boardmembers Becky Myers, Kaylee Winegar and Christy Williams. The suit remains open, but earlier this week, 18th Judicial District Judge Jeffrey Holmes granted a motion for a preliminary injunction that gave credence to claims that Peterson and company had violated Colorado Open Meetings Law by way of two-person meetings to coordinate the firing of superintendent Corey Wise.

In the end, however, the main topic of discussion, which extended well beyond its scheduled thirty-minute limit (the meeting ran about an hour and a half), was whether the board should authorize an appeal of Holmes's motion. After passionate debate during which the tension between Peterson and company and the opposing trio of Elizabeth Hanson, Susan Meek and David Ray was palpable, the board put off that decision until its next full meeting, scheduled for March 22, in order to allow for public comment — something that the March 11 agenda didn't include. But Hanson made her position clear, arguing that committing to spend taxpayer dollars on such an appeal would be "absurd."

Also weighing in on this subject after the meeting concluded was Douglas County resident Robert Marshall, who filed the lawsuit. In a letter to the board shared with Westword, Marshall dubbed the meeting a "total Charlie Foxtrot" — military slang for a "clusterfuck."

Marshall had previously contacted the board to let them know that Colorado statute provided a 49-day period in which to appeal the decision. "Because of that," he wrote, "there was no need to have another 'emergency' special meeting...without public comment to hastily authorize an appeal costing tens of thousands of dollars due to the unlawful and unethical behavior of the new board members. And were you not warned that the resolution presented was a legal travesty, which your counsel conceded at today's meeting in saying they would not bill for that 'inchoate' mess? That's generous. But is outside counsel still going to bill 1.5 to 2 hours for attending and 'preparing' for the meeting which that inchoate advice caused?"

He added that had the resolution to appeal been approved, "there would have been a second COML [Colorado Open Meetings Law] lawsuit filed on Monday asking for an injunction and a nullification of the resolution passed at that abomination of a meeting."

Continue to see a video of the meeting, followed by our previous coverage.
Original post: One of the pitches thrown out by supporters of conservatives Mike Peterson, Becky Myers, Kaylee Winegar and Christy Williams in their 2021 bid for the Douglas County Board of Education was that their victory would "bring 'boring' back to our school board meetings," in contrast to the heated sessions typically dominated by angry rants over mask requirements last year.

But this campaign pledge has been broken over and over since the newly elected members' plot to fire superintendent Corey Wise was revealed by their three fellow boardmembers — Elizabeth Hanson, Susan Meek and David Ray — during a late-January Zoom call. And a special meeting slated for 10 a.m. today, March 11, could be marked by even more chaos and contention: There's a move to make Peterson the sole person to decide how the board will respond to a lawsuit in which he's among the named defendants.

The complaint, filed by Douglas County resident Robert Marshall, argues that Peterson and his colleagues ran afoul of Colorado Open Meetings Law while engineering Wise's ouster by attempting to exploit what they saw as a loophole in the statute's language — meeting privately to determine policy in sequential groups of two rather than all at once. But this week, 18th Judicial District Judge Jeffrey Holmes found that the practice violated the letter and spirit of the regulations. In granting a preliminary injunction against the board as a whole and Peterson, Myers, Winegar and Williams in particular, the judge ruled that "the Defendants are enjoined from engaging in discussions of public business or taking formal action by three or more members of the BOE either as a group or through a series of meetings by less than three members at a time, except in public meetings open to the public."

In the immediate aftermath of the judge's ruling, the Douglas County School District offered no comment. But today's meeting appears to be a response. An excerpt from a draft resolution to be presented there reads: "Therefore, be it resolved...the Board of Education President, Mike Peterson, is hereby appointed as sole delegatee from the Board, to whom the Board delegates the responsibility, for the Board as a whole, to approve strategic recommendations in the context of the Litigation and for its complete duration, including resolution of appellate proceedings, if any; and be it further resolved that the Board of Education delegates President Mike Peterson the further responsibility to be the sole point of contact in connection with needing to approve strategic recommendations in the context of the litigation; and the Board further authorizes its present counsel of record in the Litigation to be the sole arbiter of which decisions in the context of the Litigation require such approval."

The counsel in question, Hall & Evans LLC, represents Peterson, Myers, Winegar and Williams, as well as the board as a whole, even though Hanson, Meek and Ray have openly opposed their colleagues' actions regarding Wise and pretty much everything else.

In a letter to the board, plaintiff Marshall maintains that the new proposal "is very concerning legally, ethically and morally."

Marshall points out that "it is difficult to understand how one firm, Hall & Evans, can ethically represent all the named individual board members along with the Board itself, simultaneously. Their interests are not congruent. And they are even far more divergent now after the preliminary injunction hearing and order. The Court found that the four named members engaged in an intentional circumvention and violation of the Colorado Open Meeting Law. And that the four new board members had already come to a decision before the February 4 hearing to dismiss Mr. Wise. This is directly contrary to what Mr. Peterson and Ms. Williams voluntarily testified to, under oath, in open court. The defense counsel attempted to explain this 'incongruity' by arguing that Peterson and Williams did not know they were being recorded and were not under oath when they spoke to the other three directors. But they were under oath in the court that day in the hearing so the court should believe that testimony rather than their prior statements. Given that finding, and what every person in the gallery heard at the hearing, it’s impossible to escape the obvious conclusion regarding their testimony given under penalty of perjury...."

It's unclear whether any of these objections will get an airing at the special meeting, since no public-comment section is listed on the published agenda, and discussion of the plan to put Peterson in charge of legal matters is set for just thirty minutes.

The 10 a.m. meeting will take place at the Douglas County School District administration building, 620 Wilcox Street in Castle Rock. Available seating is "contingent on room capacity restrictions and provided on a first-come basis or lottery system, if necessary," but the meeting will be livestreamed at this YouTube link. Click to read the draft resolution.