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School board member Kimberlee Sia said she often gets asked questions about how many people are suing the district she represents, Denver Public Schools.
“I have constituents who call me who say, ‘I’m one of three lawsuits at my school. You should check into how many lawsuits are happening at the district,’” Sia said.
A proposed policy that Sia introduced this month would require DPS to disclose that information and more. The proposal says the district would have to provide the school board with a list of lawsuits DPS is involved in and a tally of how much it spends on external legal costs.
“It’s important for the board to ensure we are taking care of the school district, and if we’re having a lot of lawsuits that are happening and paying a lot of damages, that falls under our fiduciary responsibilities to know that,” Sia said.
The information that the policy seeks to disclose isn’t otherwise publicly available. Chalkbeat filed an open records request for it, but DPS did not provide it.
DPS said it had a list of the lawsuits that the district’s general counsel was responsible for coordinating, including whether DPS won each lawsuit and any monetary damages it incurred. But the district declined to release that information, citing a state law that allows records to be withheld if they contain trade secrets, privileged information, or confidential financial data.
Historically, DPS has handled some lawsuits on its own and used outside counsel for others, such as the two lawsuits filed by former deans who were shot at East High School in 2023.
DPS said it did not have any lists or spreadsheets that contained the other information Chalkbeat requested. That information included all regulatory or legal compliance violations reported in the district and broken down by school, a total of monetary damages incurred by the district, a total of monetary awards won by the district, and a total of the district’s external legal costs.
Sia’s proposal would require all of that information to be reported annually to the board “for each of the prior three years.” Chalkbeat had requested the information for the past three school years.
Policy: Board should hire own attorney for superintendent contract
Sia introduced the proposed legal counsel policy at a June 5 board meeting. The board is expected to resume debate on it this fall, after its summer break.
In addition to requiring more transparency about the district’s legal liabilities, the proposal lays out when and how the school board itself should hire outside lawyers and when it should — or shouldn’t — use the school district’s in-house attorneys.
The board already hires outside lawyers on occasion, and Sia said the policy is meant to “put current practice on paper.”
“What I’m attempting to do in this policy is to ensure that we actually have a process for how this happens, so 20 or 30 years from now when we are no longer here, this policy outlives us,” she said.
The proposed policy says the district’s general counsel should handle “most legal affairs.” But it says the general counsel should not represent the board when it comes to the superintendent’s contract or performance evaluation. Instead, the proposal says the board and the superintendent should each hire their own external lawyers.
That would be a change from what happens now. Currently, the district’s general counsel advises the board on the superintendent’s contract and evaluation.
Sia said the way it’s currently done is a potential conflict of interest, since the board is the boss of the superintendent and the superintendent is the boss of the general counsel.
“If you are the general counsel and you have to answer questions about your boss, it can be tough to do that,” Sia said in an interview.
The board also regularly gets advice from a DPS attorney who specializes in policy governance, the governance style the board uses to pass policies.
The proposed policy says the board should put out a request for proposals at least every three years to hire its own board counsel. Whoever is hired would report directly to the board president, who would give the board counsel their assignments, the proposal says.
Individual board members could also make requests of the board counsel, the proposal says, as long as at least three of the seven board members made the request in writing.
Aside from advising on the superintendent’s contract and evaluation, the board counsel could — upon request — help the board draft policy proposals, review those proposals, and attend board meetings to give legal advice, the proposal says. Some of those duties are currently performed by the general counsel and the attorney who specializes in policy governance.
At least one board member is pushing back
Board member Xóchil “Sochi” Gaytán said at the June 5 board meeting that she opposes the proposal for several reasons, including that it could displace DPS General Counsel Aaron Thompson and policy governance attorney Marcus Johnson, both of whom are Black, as well as another DPS attorney who sometimes advises the board and is Latina. Gaytán pointed out that DPS Superintendent Alex Marrero is also a person of color.
“It’s really interesting to me that DPS, one of the largest urban school districts in Colorado, whose superintendent is Afro Latino and bilingual in Spanish, now has a white board member wanting to introduce … a policy that departs from this tradition and the historical way of doing business,” Gaytán said, referencing Sia, who is white.
Gaytán also expressed concerns about how much the policy would cost and whether it would be “weaponized to cause delays or to block policy work.”
In response to Gaytán’s comments about cost, Sia asked district staff to add up how much the board had spent on external legal costs in the past.
A Chalkbeat review of publicly posted school board financial documents from the past four fiscal years revealed nearly $30,000 in payments to outside law firms: one payment of $28,000 in 2023, and a series of payments to another firm totaling about $1,960 in 2025.
That $30,000 is only inclusive of what the school board spent on external lawyers. It does not include what the district as a whole spent on external lawyers.
Sia’s proposal comes shortly after the board ordered an investigation into allegations of discriminatory behavior by board member John Youngquist. Superintendent Marrero has accused Youngquist of “belittling, dismissive, and condescending behavior toward district staff, especially employees of color,” among other allegations.
Board President Carrie Olson said the board has not yet hired anyone to conduct the investigation. But past boards have hired outside law firms to do similar investigations.
A 2021 investigation into former board member Auon’tai Anderson cost about $105,000, according to invoices. The most serious allegations against Anderson were unsubstantiated, and the board paid him a $3,500 settlement in 2023. Anderson said the $3,500 was reimbursement for when he hired a law firm to represent him during the investigation.
Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.
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