Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero requested Board President Carrie Olson censure a board member he accused of both “racial insensitivity” and a conflict of interest — alleging the board member was quietly vying for his job.

“Over the past year, Mr. (John) Youngquist has consistently demonstrated a pattern of hostility, policy violations, racial insensitivity, and unethical conduct that has created at toxic working environment, undermined district leadership and distracted from our core mission of serving all students equitably,” Marrero wrote Olson in an April 22 letter.

“Most troubling, it is increasingly clear that Mr. Youngquist is not invested in the success of Denver Public Schools. Instead, his behavior signals an intent to cause harm — in pursuit of personal ambition.”

Marrero declined to comment.

Youngquist said he was blindsided by the move.

“It’s a real attack on me,” Youngquist said Tuesday. “I don’t understand the intent or motivation behind this.”

Youngquist was elected to the board in 2023, among a “flip the board” campaign to shift control of the DPS board by electing new members aligned with reform-minded or anti-Marrero factions.

Before running for the at-large seat, Youngquist was a longtime educator serving as area superintendent for DPS from 2011 to 2013 and as principal at East High School — the district’s flagship campus.

He had applied for the superintendent position in Denver after Susana Córdova left in 2020 in a process Youngquist called “fair.”

In a scathing correspondence to Olson, Marrero raised a number of unspecified incidents between Youngquist and the staff. The superintendent’s complaint also criticized Youngquist for reaching out directly to staff and for what Marrero called false accusations that imply he had manipulated graduation data.

“He has suggested a possibility of a buyout of my contract to raise this strategic option — not out of concern for the district, but as a tactic of intimidation,” Marrero went on to write. “His obsession with my removal, coupled with his private aspirations to assume district leadership, strongly suggests a conflict of interest.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that his actions are driven by a personal ambition to become superintendent himself as he had previously pursued repeatedly unsuccessfully.”

Last week, the board voted 5-2 to extend Marrero’s contract early. Marrero’s contract was set to expire in June 2026. Youngquist and Director Kimberlee Sia were the dissenting votes.

In his censure request, Marrero asked that Youngquist be reprimanded for “repeated violations of board policy, inappropriate conduct and unethical behavior.” Marrero is also seeking to prohibit Youngquist from “engaging directly with staff outside of official channels,” anti-based training and a review of “potential conflict of interests. If this is his intent to seek leadership within the district.”

“I cannot in good faith engage professionally with someone whose conduct suggests he actively wants me — and this district — to fail,” Marrero said in his letter.

The letter and email to Olson were released under the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA).

It is unclear how Olson responded. She declined to provide her email responses to Marrero, instead suggesting The Denver Gazette submit a CORA request.

“The Board has policies to respond to complaints against Board members and intended to meet with its counsel to understand those processes and its legal obligations in response to the complaint,” Olson said in a statement.

Olson said the board was poised to convene an executive session last Thursday — before voting on the controversial move to renew Marrero’s contract 13 months early — to discuss Marrero’s complaint, but did not have a sufficient number of votes to do so. The language for that executive session did not explicitly mention Youngquist, just that the district had received a discrimination complaint.

“The Board has not taken any action or made any decisions in response to the complaint,” Olson told The Denver Gazette Tuesday.

Olson said she is working to put it on the agenda for when the board meets next week.

It’s unclear what the censure process requires. Olson only said the executive session would be used to obtain legal advice.

When the board censured then-Board Vice President Auon’tai Anderson in 2021, they didn’t meet behind closed doors. Anderson’s censure followed an independent investigation that found he had flirted online with a 16-year-old student while serving as a board member.

In January, the board aired a complaint against Youngquist, saying he had had inappropriate and unprofessional behavior with staffers while seeking to address his board compensation.

Youngquist responded with a written accusation that the board had violated Colorado’s Open Meetings laws.

Youngquist is the chief operating officer for Denver Youth Program and is president of PrincipalEd Consulting, according to the DPS website.