A federal judge has rejected a request from Denver Public Schools to dismiss a lawsuit filed by former McAuliffe International School Principal Kurt Dennis, who claims that he was fired for criticizing the district’s safety policies.
According to The Colorado Sun, Judge John Kane rejected Dener Public School’s motion for dismissal on December 24.
In its initial request, the district argued that Dennis—who had shared concerns about safety policies two days after an East High School shooting left two administrators injured—had made inappropriate or otherwise unacceptable remarks during an interview with 9News.
Although Dennis says that these remarks should be afforded First Amendment protections, the district argues that Dennis violated student privacy rights, including rights guaranteed under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, by giving the media redacted records of a student’s written threats.
The district also said that, because Dennis gave the interview in his capacity as principal rather than in his capacity as a private citizen, he is subject to employment-related “disciplinary measures.”
However, in his decision, Judge Kane noted that FERPA’s non-disclosure provisions do not apply to individual instances of disclosure. Instead, they apply only to institutional policies.
“Even if FERPA did make an individual’s actions unlawful, based on the record before me, the information disclosed by Mr. Dennis is not covered by the Act,” Kane wrote.
Kane also said that it is “plausible” that Dennis’s remarks to 9News were not made in any official capacity.
“Mr. Dennis’s speech was not limited to a McAuliffe- or DPS-specific audience,” Kane wrote. “Instead, the intended audience for his speech was the general public via a public news channel. His message, while school related, was the type of criticism a non-government employee, i.e., a private citizen, could make and was made in a forum—a local news channel—available to a private citizen.”
Dennis has since told the Colorado Sun that, since his dismissal from Denver Public Schools, he has struggled to find employment in an education-related field. Although he has managed to find work as a paraprofessional—work that Dennis says reminds him why he became an educator in the first place—it has come at the cost of his pay and his professional reputation.
“First and foremost, I just want people to know that what Denver Public Schools did was wrong,” Dennis told the Sun. “I’d like an apology. My reputation, I don’t think, can ever be fully restored, but at least there’s some recognition that I was wronged. And, having gone through this, I’ve just gained a deep appreciation for whistleblowers and people that speak up at some level of personal risk.”
Sources
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