Landon Yarrington said that he and his wife, Jonna, just want to see the Poudre School District follow the law.
The parents of a student at Beattie Elementary School said they were troubled by how the PSD board decided which schools would close or consolidate. So they attended listening sessions, wrote multiple letters and, finally, a type of formal written notice called a Letter of Demand. When those entreaties went unanswered by the district or PSD superintendent Brian Kingsley, they decided to sue.
The Yarringtons raised nearly $14,000 in a crowdfunding campaign to bring forth a civil lawsuit against PSD, claiming the committee that made the recommendations should not have been able to deliberate behind closed doors.
“It is not a matter of closing School X over School Y,” Landon Yarrington said. “The whole process from the start has been unlawful because the public has been without a chance to participate in it.”
The school board decided Oct. 27 to close five schools next fall: Beattie Elementary, Johnson Elementary, Putnam Elementary and Blevins Middle School. In addition, Centennial High School and Poudre Community Academy will consolidate to form a new school. The district plans to close Irish Escuela Elementary in 2028. A sixth, Timnath Elementary, could close in 2028 but that decision could change if the town is able to secure funding that would keep it open.
The board noted that they received recommendations from the Comprehensive Planning Committee, a 22-member group made up of district staff members plus principals and parents or guardians chosen by lottery. The district noted in the charter that formed the committee that its purpose was to be advisory and not issue decisions. Because of that, the district contended, its work was not open to the public.
Yarrington said that is a violation of open meetings law, and PSD parents deserve better.
“Having opportunities for public engagement or listening sessions are a very poor substitute for the public’s statutory right to participate in the process by observing the meetings where public business is being discussed,” he said.
Jeff Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, says Colorado’s open meetings law requires any “local public body” – an advisory, rule-making group, essentially – to do their work in public.
“I don’t think we have any case law on how this is supposed to be interpreted,” Roberts said. “We’ve had other situations where a government will claim an advisory body like this is not covered by the open meetings law because it wasn’t directly appointed by another public body. The statute doesn’t seem to make that distinction.”
The lawsuit asks an 8th Judicial District court to invalidate the board’s Oct. 27 decision and seeks an emergency injunction against any moves the district would make to implement closures or consolidations.
When the process is fully transparent, Yarrington said, he believes more comprehensive evaluations of the schools and discussions about the district’s priorities, could take place.
“I went into this thinking that some schools had to close. I don’t doubt the demographic cliff, and I don’t doubt the challenges that that poses for our society at large,” he said. “However, I’ve started to come around … it really does come down to what kind of society we want to have.”
“The board of education could say, ‘We really like small schools and neighborhood schools,’ and they could allocate funding to that. They could change boundaries. These are things that were not adequately explored in the CPC process.”
A PSD spokesperson said the district is reviewing the complaint with legal counsel and would not comment further.
