DENVER — The former principal of Denver's largest middle school has been officially terminated, following a vote by Denver's school board Thursday night.
Denver Public Schools (DPS) decided to fire former McAuliffe International School principal Kurt Dennis earlier this summer, after he spoke to 9NEWS about school security concerns after a shooting at East High School.
The DPS school board voted 6-1 Thursday night to support the superintendent's decision to terminate Dennis.
Dennis revealed that DPS employees were doing the same style of pat-downs that led to the violence at East High School back in March.
Dennis told 9NEWS he recognized similarities between what happened at East and within his own school - staff members being told to do weapons pat-downs without training. He said a student at his school, charged with attempted murder, was being put back in class over the objections of school leaders and police.
The district fired Dennis in July, saying he violated student privacy laws.
Then this summer, DPS launched an investigation after a whistleblower said McAuliffe used a room at the school to lock up students.
In a news conference, school board members said students of color were locked in the room multiple times and that the room violated district policy. Board members called it a "seclusion room" and "isolation room." Dennis' attorney, David Lane, called it a "de-escalation room."
Lane said he plans to file a federal lawsuit in the coming days.
"The game plan now is, right around September 1, they will have every opportunity to say all their reasons for firing Kurt Dennis to a federal judge and a federal jury, because that's where they're all going to end up," Lane said.
"I'm very much looking forward to doing my depositions on these folks and calling them out on every lie and misstatements they've put forward to the public."
There were also a lot of district families who were upset about his firing this summer. Even the school administrators' union called for Dennis to be reinstated.
There were tense exchanges between board members during Thursday night's meeting.
Director Scott Balderman was the only school board member who voted against the superintendent's recommendation for termination Thursday night, citing concerns with the process and public statements made by board members.
"From the beginning of this process, board members have made public statements concerning personnel matters which I believe violated board policy," Balderman said.
"I notified the board by email on August 6 that press conferences on operational matters were not appropriate. In my four years on the board, neither the board or the district conducted a press conference regarding a personnel matters. Furthermore, board members conducted their own investigation related to this personnel matter which also likely violated board policy."
Director Scott Esserman argued back:
"Nobody on this board interfered due process. The individual we're talking about [Dennis] went out into public and publicly stated he’d done this, maybe he violated his own due process. But we did not. We revealed nothing. We... shared with the public what was going on, not details of an investigation, not anything that wasn’t already public. How that’s violation of due process in anybody's mind is simply shocking."
Lane, Dennis' attorney, said his client is now searching for a new job outside of DPS.
"Hopefully he'll be hired by a much more courageous school district that doesn't have the thin skin this one does when they criticize, publicly on television news, a principal," he said.
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