Who wants to work for Douglas County Schools? Raise your hand, please! The district needs a new superintendent. It will soon need hundreds of new teachers.

Applicants may discover the unique atmosphere of this school district by watching the Feb. 4 board meeting in which the superintendent, Cory Wise, was publicly terminated. Kaylee Winegar, majority board member, remarked that the superintendent is beloved in the community. Christy Williams, another majority board member, reiterated that Wise is beloved. They both voted to fire the man.

Majority board member Becky Myers voted “no” to firing before she voted “yes,” and asked “can I go home now?” Board President Mike Peterson was a “yes” on firing Wise on the Thursday night the week before the Friday evening Wise was officially terminated. Peterson and Williams met with newly-hired, out-of-house attorney William Trachman, general counsel for the conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation, to determine how to end the employment of the 26-year Douglas County School District veteran.

Minority board members got the message about Wise’s upcoming termination after the fact, which displeased them as a violation of board policy and potentially a violation of Colorado’s open meeting laws. Open meeting rules state that if three members of a school board meet, a formal meeting notice must be presented. Peterson and Williams argued to minority board members that there were only two of them in the meeting with Trachman and with the superintendent the following morning at 7 a.m. This issue will be decided in court as Robert Marshall, an attorney in Douglas County, has filed suit.

This suit is in addition to the legal action the former superintendent has filed in a Colorado Open Records Act request to the school district. Wise has hired two law firms to handle his termination and consequent legal issues. Here’s a rundown of the majority board’s beefs:

New board members ran on an anti-masking platform. At the termination board meeting, Winegar told Wise that she expected him to take his own initiative to dump required masking after she and her colleagues were elected. Minority board member Elizabeth Hanson pointed out that mask policy was a position of the previous board and that Wise was following that board’s direction.

Peterson wanted to know if Wise was involved in a lawsuit over masking brought by the district and parents with special-needs children against the county’s new public health department. Hanson and Susan Meeks, another minority board member, noted that the lawsuit occurred before the new board was elected so should not be considered as part of Wise’s performance evaluation under the new board’s composition. Minority board members earlier objected to Peterson’s appearance with a county commissioner and the director of the new health board supporting the un-masking of the county and its public schools without notifying the full board of his intention.

Peterson objected to Wise’s handling of a board resolution related to the district’s equity policies. The board president declared that Wise was untrustworthy when he didn’t defend the board’s position on the resolution. Apparently, board member Williams heard from several senior district officials that Wise was “surprised” the board didn’t yank the equity policy entirely. Wise’s surprise didn’t go down well. Neither did the resolution go down well with district students who complained that it would undermine an honest examination of American history.

According to NPR news, the four new board members were supported for their election by the 1776 Project which aims to low-ball unfortunate historical facts around slavery, Jim Crow, and race relations in general. The new board’s resolution affirms that America was founded on the principle that all individuals, not just men, were created as equals, that these aspirations haven’t always been achieved, but that America continues as a beacon for unprecedented individual freedom, equality of opportunity and prosperity. This resolution drops the district into the contentious middle of national arguments over how good America was, is, and will be.

Other than these rumbles over every explosive issue on the nation’s front-burner, except perhaps whether Superintendent Wise also caused Russia to invade Ukraine, the district is doing great. Contact Douglas County Public Schools for the superintendent’s job, teaching jobs, substitute jobs, etc.

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.