Denver Public Schools continues to defy parents and the rest of the public by refusing to release the recording of a five-hour school board meeting conducted behind closed doors in March following a shooting at East High School. Two administrators were seriously wounded.

DPS is holding out even after a Denver judge ordered the recording’s release last week given a clear-cut violation of Colorado’s Open Meeting Law. Rather than comply with the law, the district on Monday announced it was appealing the court’s ruling.

Among the grounds for appeal that DPS’ hired-gun attorneys claimed in their filing in Denver District Court: that the judge erred in reviewing and then revealing details from the recording, “frustrating DPS’ rights of appeal.” As reported by The Gazette, the district’s lawyers also said the court order did not resolve details about attorney fees and court costs.

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It amounts to circular logic and grasping at technicalities – seemingly in search of any pretext to keep the recording from the parents and taxpayers to whom the school district is supposed to be answerable.

Which is to say, the district is thumbing its nose at the whole community, including at The Gazette and other news media that have sued for access to the recording in order to share it with the public.

At issue is a March 23 “executive session” convened by the DPS board to discuss returning Denver police to school campuses a day after the shooting at East High. In a spasm of hyper-political nonsense three years earlier, the board had voted to remove cops from campus and now was being forced to eat crow.

Bringing police back as school resource officers was the right thing to do. It’s a highly effective policy yielding many benefits, including of course enhanced school security.

But there was no need to shut out the press and public to mull the matter. Certainly not for five hours and 13 minutes. Too bad if the board was embarrassed to admit it had been dead wrong and that its anti-police policy may have led to near-deadly consequences. The priority should have been keeping concerned parents plugged into the decision-making process – not preserving the political viability and protecting the delicate egos of public officials.

And if the closed-door meeting wasn’t about damage control – a pointless pursuit in any event for a board that’s roundly dismissed as dysfunctional and inept over wide-ranging issues – then just what is the district trying to hide?

In any event, Colorado law is clear on the subject. State and local elected bodies like the DPS board may not discuss and develop policy, or vote on it, in secret. It must be done in public except in a few narrow circumstances that Denver District Court Judge Andrew J. Luxen ruled didn’t apply in this case. The judge found that the board had engaged in a “lengthy discussion of general security arrangements … including the return of school resource officers” behind closed doors before holding a public vote that, by that point, was a mere formality.

The public had been excluded from the substantive discussion, and a court now has ordered a recording of the discussion to be turned over to the public.

Yet, the district is digging in its heels. All the more reason for Denver voters to demand accountability – and new leadership – when filling three school board seats up for election on this November’s ballot.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board