The Douglas County school board is expected to name a sole finalist to become its next superintendent Tuesday night amid an ongoing legal battle related to the district’s previous top administrator.

The board is set to choose between two candidates, named earlier this month, to become the superintendent of the state’s third-largest school district, just over six weeks after the position opened. The candidates are Erin Kane, who runs a charter school in Douglas County and received early, public support from the board’s two top officers, and Danny Winsor, the district’s executive director of schools.

The two were vetted privately by the board, and their candidacies were announced publicly shortly after, on March 2. The board then held a public interview on March 4 and community forums the following week. 

As the board’s Tuesday meeting agenda reads, Winsor or Kane will be offered the job, replacing Corey Wise, and the district will then begin negotiations to finish a contract.

Though the board’s three, longer-serving members have expressed concern about the speed of the hiring process, the four newly elected leaders have all said they want a quick hire to bring stability to the district and lead it into a likely funding ballot measure in November.

While the board’s leaders emphasize a need to look forward, the end of Tuesday night’s agenda highlights how difficult that may be. The board and those four leaders – Mike Peterson, Christy Williams, Kaylee Winegar and Becky Myers – are being sued by Robert Marshall, a county resident, for allegedly breaking open meeting laws in the days before they voted to fire Wise on Feb. 4. As part of the early stages of that lawsuit, a Douglas County judge ordered the board to stop communicating and making decisions as the board’s leaders had ahead of Wise’s firing: in a string of one-on-one, linked conversations.

The rest of the case – whether those conversations broke the law and if Wise should be reinstated – still has to be litigated. 

On March 12, the board met in a special session at Peterson’s behest to consider appealing the judge’s order. An attorney for the law firm representing the board in the suit, Hall and Evans, told the board he needed immediate direction – essentially that day – as to whether it wanted to appeal the order. Over an ensuing 90 minutes of heated debate, board member Elizabeth Hanson repeatedly rebuked the attorney, calling his behavior in communicating with Peterson “unbelievably inappropriate.”

Finally, as the board continued to go in circles, the attorney spoke up and said he’d reviewed the rules governing appeals during the meeting and determined that the board had seven weeks – not two weeks, as he’d initially said – to file an appeal. The contentious meeting, called based on that initial advice, quickly broke up.

Now, the board is expected to decide Tuesday night what to do about the lawsuit. According to a draft resolution the seven members will consider, they may ask Hall and Evans to seek a time extension and an appeal.

Or they might hire new attorneys altogether and direct those new lawyers to get clarity on the order from the court. Hall and Evans’ interpretation of the order was also repeatedly questioned by some board members during that chaotic March 12 meeting.

According to its agenda, the board will consider hiring the law firm Gessler Blue to defend it and its four leaders in the rest of the suit. In its proposed contract, Gessler Blue partner Scott Gessler told the board his firm would represent them without a retainer, at least initially. The firm will charge the district $225 an hour for attorneys and between $150 and $175 per hour for paralegal work.

Board members said earlier this month that the district is paying for the cost of the lawsuit out of pocket, as its insurance provider had declined to cover it.