Episode 11: Brandon Pryor speaks hard truths about Denver Public Schools

Transcript

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 0:08

Hi everyone. Today on the podcast we have Brandon Pryor, a longtime Denver activist and one of the most outspoken, some would say, one of the harshest critics of DPS. Brandon has recently started a new group with I think some other community members called Parents Demand Justice. We are really excited to have him on the podcast today to talk about what he's been up to, to get his take on what is going on with DPS. They're certainly in the news quite a bit lately and hear his perspective on some of the tactics and strategies that this district has been using over the last couple of months and frankly years. So with that, Brandon, thank you so much and welcome to the podcast.

Brandon Pryor: 0:49

Thank you. Thank you guys for having me.

Alan Gottlieb: 0:52

One thing I wanted to ask you about Brandon just really quickly is before we get into the stuff about the data, which I think is the most important part of this, the data you've been pulling apart that's out there for everybody to see and the district tries to hide, but is you, yourself as a victim, you were a victim of the ret kind of retribution. That's been Alex Marrero. Mode of doling out to people. John Youngquist being the most recent, they actually banned you from public comment a couple of years ago. Told you had no right to even show up. You couldn't speak. I don't even remember what else it was. All was. You can fill that in. But that was covered quite extensively. Certainly we wrote about it at Board Hawk about this and that. There was, that you won in federal court in terms of a. Injunction to stop them from banning you, but now there's actually been, the case is over. It's been settled, and I know you can't talk about it in detail, but just what can you tell us about the fact that you beat DPS in federal court on this case?

Brandon Pryor: 1:44

Yeah, just it felt really good, right when they violated my first amendment free speech rights and ban me from all of DPS, every facility. I couldn't, wasn't allowed to come to public comment. Just speaking truth to power and being one of the loudest voices in the city that was critical of what they were doing. They didn't like it and they tried to paint me as an aggressive violent person, which was completely untrue and unfounded. But we did settle the case and I'm looking forward to moving forward with my activism. Ensuring that, all students have access to a high quality education.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 2:24

Thanks so much, Brandon. I remember when that first came out and the backlash of when the district banned you from school board meetings, from public comment. And I think at the time, something that I had said was, he's not doing anything that any. Parent who is going through the same things wouldn't do for their child. So I think what I find interesting is so much right now in DPS and you talked about this a little bit a couple of days ago on the Brother Jeff show that I watched that, that was great. That a lot of what is being said is about race and racism. But when I saw the behavior towards you, what I found so interesting is if the tables were turned, and this was somebody who was a different gender or color. I don't know that the same type of tactics about violence and fear tactics would've happened. So I guess along that line, what I'm curious to hear from you is you've experienced retribution firsthand. I am right now going through that myself with some of the activism I've been doing around DPS and figuring out my way through it and what my response will be. And I'm not quite ready to share it publicly, but ev eventually I will. I have folks coming to me from the district. I have, I know Alan has had people reach out. As I've shared my story privately it resonates with a lot of people who have also said that this isn't surprising. People are afraid to speak out right now. What advice would you give to somebody, whether they're in the district or they're an activist that wants to speak out, but is afraid of retaliation? What advice would you give them? If they're sitting here wondering what they can and should do?

Brandon Pryor: 3:54

My first bit of advice is just to be strong, be confident if you know what you're saying is true and you're fighting for the right reasons and you're standing up for, folks who quite frankly can't, don't have the ability to stand up from the, for themselves. We're talking about grade school children in a lot of these instances. And so being able to speak truth to power. It's difficult. It's, it is really hard because sometimes you get people who push back who want to, categorize you or say mean things about you or, take shots at you. To me, my best piece of advice is you know, surround yourself with like-minded people who support you and your message, and who agree with your message, and continue speaking your truth, right? Because it's gonna resonate with somebody for everyone. Person out there that may be a naysayer or negative about what you're saying, you're gonna have 20 supporters and speaking up in this type of fashion encourages people, empowers people to do the same. So I just tell people to stay encouraged, but the attacks will come when you're, fighting for what's right.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 5:06

That's right. Thank you so much, Brandon. One, one, follow up on that. Speaking of truth to power. We were talking a little bit before the podcast started about some of the data that you were working to disaggregate as part of the Parents Demand Justice Group. Can you just talk about that work that you're doing and have you gotten any response, initial response from this work?

Alan Gottlieb: 5:26

And let me just interject one thing, Brandon, sorry. Which is in the context of the fact that they just extended Marrero contract

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 5:33

Oh yeah. That this data seems

Alan Gottlieb: 5:34

Especially meaningful and they and I assume although board members like John Youngquist have a hard time getting this data, the board as a whole must know what's underlying this data and I guess one question I would have as you start talking about it is what I've heard people like Scott Esserman say is that the tests themselves are so inherently. Culturally and racially biased that you have to discount what they show you. And I guess my question is if that's true. Okay. But then how do you measure if you can't use these tests to know how your students are doing? I'd just be interested in your response to that too.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 6:09

That's a lot, Brandon. Just I know. Sorry. Answer how you wanna answer.

Brandon Pryor: 6:13

Yeah, for sure. But first things first, man like you said, Alan is off. Back of them renewing Alex More's contract and not really having any measurables to point to, to justify it. A couple folks in community started looking through some things, the data and more specifically Alex Marrero strategic Roadmap. He put out back in 2022. Now, in this roadmap, it, there was, it was highlighted that the achievement for black and Latinx and, economically disadvantaged special education all these subgroups that the gap had widened for achievement during Covid. It was his mission to come in and see to it. That there were 10% gains in math and English proficiencies across the board for the most marginalized students, the ones I just named. And this was his goal that he has set for himself and the rest of the district. Now, if we look at the data from then to now, we haven't improved any. We've actually gotten worse. So the proficiencies have gone down. And this is the reasoning for trying to point people to the data and encourage people to use this data in this fight to, to create change because the data does not lie. So what we've done is created a website called Parents Demand Justice. And on the website you'll be able to see updates. Daily with different reports that speak to different sets of data and that's disaggregated by race. We're even gonna disaggregate by neighborhood and different subgroups so that we can paint this picture for all of DPS and Denver to see, have a clear picture of where we are. We know where we were. We need to see where we are. We need to have a really legitimate plan to improve. So that's the goal of the parents Demand Justice. To answer your question, Alan, about standardized tests being culturally biased, I do agree that some of these standard standardized tests have some cultural bias, but I also believe that black students can excel. I. And that they have excellence on the inside of them. Latinx students have excellence on the inside of them. It's not some far off distant place that they have to, try to travel to, to get to excellence. They have it on the inside, they just have to reveal it like Superman, and it's not being cultivated. So I just think we can do a better job of serving our kids.

Alan Gottlieb: 9:03

What do you think is motivating their desire to just, okay, let me back up half a step. This board and this superintendent, more than any other board and superintendent claims to be all about equity, and especially working with the most marginalized students and lifting them up. That's all the rhetoric, and yet they seem perfectly content not only to extend this contract to somebody who's not doing any of that. Just measurably as you just said, but they're papering over the, these huge problems with, aggregated data that makes the district as a whole look good. When you start to dig down a layer, you see it all the stuff that you're talking about, Brandon that the kids they profess to want to help the most are the ones who are really struggling. They did that recently with the NAP scores and the subgroup. I've talked about this before, tuda the urban districts and how they're one of the best urban districts and you look at the data and actually with low income kids and kids of color, they are. Worse than most of the other big cities, even in the country. What do you think is going on here? You can make an argument. Marrero is just trying to promote himself and get his next job, but why would the board members be so complicit in this?

Brandon Pryor: 10:11

To me, I've asked the same question a hundred times, Alan, and the only thing that I can come up with is I don't know. And I don't know if he's, if Alex has created some level of comfort for the board. If he has figured out a way to support initiatives that don't have anything to do with DPS, I know that there's board members that are involved in nonprofit work and different work. I don't know if he's found a way to support them, but I question the level of corruption, right? Because if your only job is to hold one person accountable. For the job that they're doing in running this school district, and then they don't do it. It raises all kind of red flags for me, man. And so even, I don't know if there's been promises to take care of them once their tenure on the board is done through connections in this city or what have you. I don't know. But this, it is a legitimate question that I think that people need to continue to ask. And also. I would be interested in Corey requesting all of the communications between the board and Alex Marrero. I wanna know what they talk about. Like, why are they on the same team? You know what I mean? Zero accountability and a whole groupthink operation.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 11:37

Brandon the corruption comment. That one's, I've heard whisperings. I've never heard it quite so direct. To me, I have nothing to no evidence to say oh, I believe there's blatant corruption. I think that there's. Some strange sharing of information and I think it's very odd that some board members have access to information, others don't. What I really see is and Alan, are you originally from Chicago? Is that Yeah. Yeah. So I see as like the machine politics is, what I'm witnessing here is like you have Alex, who's from. The East Coast and it's just a different type of politics. It's like the different kind of machine and more of that corrupt political game. And I see his style of leadership, for example, when the Denver Post wrote their piece and his response to the activism that me and other parents were doing was to call us audacious and delusional that you don't really do that out here in Denver, like as an elect, as a public official, you, that's the kind of stuff in New York or Chicago or I don't know. To me it's maybe it is corruption, I don't know. And if anybody wants to share information with Alan or Brandon or I, y'all know how to get ahold of us, but to me it's it's the machine politics.

Brandon Pryor: 12:47

And I think there's a a lot of intimidation. Like when we're talking about retaliation intimidation coercion and things of that nature he's able to gain compliance.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 13:01

That's what's terrifying. That's through fear

Brandon Pryor: 13:04

tactics. Yep. And you have people that are afraid to speak up, even myself, right? I'm one of the most vocal, unapologetic voices. And even when I was going through my court. Situation, I was silent and I know there was a lot of people probably wondering yo, if Brandon's quiet, maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't mess with him. You know what I mean? And so like he's been able to do a lot of things because of he's created a atmosphere of fear. And he is gained all this compliance because of it, and because he is intimidating people and retaliating on people and, he's just, to me, he is not the right fit for our city or for this school district.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 13:50

Yeah. A Alan brings this up and he's brought it up in the last couple of podcasts around the parallels that we see to Trump's style of leadership. To me, it's, I don't care if you are a progressive, if you are a Republican, if you're a socialist, there are some things that Alex has done that I actually support, like his work on immigration the injunction from the federal government. Like I support those things, right? But when we then allow ourselves to be silenced and allow him to then lean into these like authoritarian anti-democratic tactics. We give up our own power. That's where I really start to become concerned. So I appreciate that you are now back in the public space being vocal again, sharing that information. We talked about this a little bit like you are one of the most vocal critics. There are some critics out there of you. That maybe don't like your strategy, don't like your tactics, right? Like this in Denver. Just not everybody's as vocal as you. This would be different again if we were maybe in the east kosher in a different en environment. But what would you say to the people who are critical of your approach and your style to, to the district?

Brandon Pryor: 15:03

Marginalized, oppressed people do not have to be nice to you. Marginalized oppressed people do not have to explain, our feelings and how we feel about how we're being oppressed. And, that, that's what I have to say to that. And Mo I agree with the multi multiple strategies, right? There has to be a game plan that includes all of it. We have to have the person that's. Willing to listen to everything before they say a word that's just in the back of the room, soaking it in. I love that person to be on my team. We gotta have somebody that's on the front line that's saying all the things nobody wants to be said, or that nobody wants to say that's me. You have to have, different approaches to the fight and I would never knock anybody. For how they contribute to the fight. The only time I do that is when people compromise like their beliefs and they compromise and, I don't know for. And sell out our communities. Yeah. I don't know a better way to say it than selling out. No.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 16:19

That is a very polite way of saying, and I've also heard you say it a different way when referring to black folks in the Latino community, there's a term that some people were to consider derogatory. It's called Lache. And in the Latino community, it's basically it goes back to this Cortez one of the original colonizers. He had a translator who was a native woman and she basically sold out her community in order to gain favor for the colonizer. And so I know that the black community has a different term for that kind of thing. When I've heard some of the things you've said on Brother Jeff around that kind of stuff, for example, what I've heard you out in the community, what I wrestle with is. There are people who I think, work in the system and are trying to improve the system, right? And I do think there are people in the system that are, they see the power and they see, they get greedy and they take the power and they think about themselves and not the community that raised them, the community that brought them up. So how like it's hard for me to judge though, right? So I don't know who's in dps, who are the black and brown folks in dps that are trying to change it from within, but I know a lot of them. Have some sweetheart deals right now, so I don't know. They've, I have a question for you, but I guess that's the thing I wrestle with on this and who am I to judge? But obviously I'm super judgy.

Brandon Pryor: 17:37

That's what I was speaking to when I said Alex has provided a level of comfort. That's why there's a lack of criticism is because everybody in the executive cabinet is making over$200,000 a year.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 17:49

Pretty comfy. Pretty comfy, right? Who

Brandon Pryor: 17:50

giving, who's giving that up to ruffle feathers that like, let's let somebody else do that while I keep collecting this check. And I think that's what we're seeing, man. Like they, they people get propped up in these positions. And when you're dealing with a billion dollar. Annual budget, like where this isn't an institution to educate anymore. It's a, it is a corporation. It's not an institution anymore, it's a corporation and it's being run just like that. And so it, there needs to be more checks and balances. I honestly believe that the board should be paid a salary. I think that would take away some of the. Potential for corruption, i'm not sure how much of it would take away, when you got have to work a full-time job and you don't get paid much of anything to do this heavy lift it's easy to dangle a carrot. Yeah. I'm not saying that's what happened, but I would not doubt it.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 18:50

Brandon, have you ever considered running for the board?

Brandon Pryor: 18:52

That was

Alan Gottlieb: 18:52

gonna be my question.

Brandon Pryor: 18:56

Every it seems like every election people ask me that. I'm careful though, because I don't wanna be put in a situation where, to be even attempted to be tokenized. You know what I mean? I feel like I'm effective from right where I am and like I know that there needs to be a real like intentional focus on policy change and correcting some of the policies that have handicapped our board. But I think there's people out here in our city that can, that are capable of governing this district in a quality way. It I'll, I'm not gonna say I would never run, but I'm not gonna run this time.

Alan Gottlieb: 19:36

So how do you what's the first step to turning this around? Where we are right now.'cause we're in the worst o in my opinion, and again, I've been around 30 years following DPS. I think we're in a worse place right now than we've been anytime that I've been following the district.

Brandon Pryor: 19:50

You gotta start with truth and reconciliation. You have to look in the mirror and say, this is where we are, this is what we have done. We have to do better, and we want to work with anyone and everyone who can help us get better. That's, I don't understand why that's hard. They've like intentionally boxed everybody out that cares about kids and it's because they're mad that we have the correct answer and they don't. And so that like as soon as they can get past their ego and get out of their own way, we can start fixing things.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 20:31

I really like what you're saying, Brandon. I sometimes get really disheartened with how big it feels like we're tackling. I wouldn't even say the system, but the system. We have DPS as a system. We have the union as a system. We have the reform community and the reform money as a system we have. The way that we do elections and c fours and c threes and all these things as a system, right? So it, it really breaks my heart when we look at things in such a binary as it's union and it's reform. And if, and you have to pick a side. And what I really have appreciated about you is I don't see you getting boxed into either of those. And that's really hard to do in this, in, in Denver. It's just hard to do in Denver period. In DPS. How do you view this power structure of, to win a board seat, you have to be beholden to one group or the other? I really like what you're saying about it's about students, but

Brandon Pryor: 21:35

yeah, who

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 21:36

often we let these other things and the adult stuff just get in the way, the noise.

Brandon Pryor: 21:41

We need to have some campaign finance reform. First of all, you shouldn't be able to do like Scott Baldman and buy your own seat. Yep. Period. Let's be real. Oh yeah. I remember that. He's one of the authors of this policy governance BS that they're trying to do now. And like he bought his seat. If he wasn't allowed to buy his seat, would nth. Be in that seat and if she was, would we be dealing with any of the stuff we're dealing with? And so like campaign finance reform is important. But we definitely gotta flip the board and return to the original governance model that the board was using so that they can have the authority to, question what's going on with the operation side of things. Yep. I don't know if I've answered the whole question.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 22:33

It's a hard, it's just a hard thing. I wrestle with a lot and I'm curious to see how you just balance it so well.'cause, because as Alan was saying earlier, you're consistent. You're consistent, and you're like, at the end of the day, it's about students. Nothing else matters. And you are not gonna bought, no one's buying your like voice or your opinion on this.

Brandon Pryor: 22:50

My, so my best way that I could put it is like what we've always said, and this is a line that I saw on a documentary, I don't know if you guys remember. It came out maybe six, seven years ago called Backpack full of Cash. It was a, you didn't see it?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 23:06

Yep.

Brandon Pryor: 23:07

Yeah. But a gentleman talking on there, it's yo, we don't have any permanent friends or permanent enemies. Yeah. We have permanent interests. That's how I've been operating. Like this whole time. My, my only interest is the students. And so I'm not, my allegiance isn't to a reformer or to, the union or to my allegiance is to the kids and their outcomes and what's best for them and who's gonna, who's gonna do their job. So that's how I function and I've got. Good relationships on, both sides of the fence. I think that's important too.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 23:45

I agree. I,

Alan Gottlieb: 23:45

I said this to you, Brandon, before we went on the air, but just what you said reminds me as crazy as this may sound to some people I've always thought of you, or recently I started thinking of you as an Old Testament prophet because you you call the wrath of God down on people and you don't care who you piss off, who you offend how you say what you say. In, in your own time right now, there's lots of people who think you go way too far, but you have been the mo like I said, the most consistent voice I've heard in the time I've been following this district. And you just don't care. I. Who you offend because you're, you are focused always on the kids. And in that context, I wanted to ask you a question'cause we had John Youngquist on the podcast pretty recently talking about this whole nonsense that happened with him and the retaliation and the request to censure him. He's like such a, I've known John A. Long time. He's such a nice guy. He is soft spoken. He's got, there's some steel in there. It's not like he's a wimp, but. What advice would you give him for how to fight back against the bullshit they're throwing up against him right now?

Brandon Pryor: 24:50

One, I think it's multi-layered. I think some,'cause like I've hear, I've heard from a couple different groups of people, I know there's the group that fully supports John Young. There's a group of people that, like some of this stuff and may not like everything. My advice to him is just focus on the task at hand. His function as the board director is to hold Alex Marrero accountable. That's all he's been trying to do in his role as a board director. So I applaud that effort, right? If he's asking the questions around data around proficiencies even discipline, right? He I met with John last week. We went and had coffee and he was telling me that, some of the data, he wasn't, able to get, because three board members have to ask for it. So to me it is completely insane to think that in 2025 a board member of a school district has to ask for data. That should be readily available to them with one click of a button. They shouldn't have to ask anybody for that data. So it just, it amazed me, man, but I just want to encourage him to keep. Keep doing what's right. Keep trying to hold him accountable and keep asking the right questions. And for the instances that may be touchy around race, talk to people. I would encourage him to talk to people, talk to the black community, ask how he can grow, if that is an issue. We all need to do work as it relates to how we interact with, different groups of people. So I just would encourage him to do that work and continue doing the work to hold Alex Morero and the district accountable because it's appreciated. And I think there's a lot more people on his side of that argument than Alex's side

Alan Gottlieb: 26:45

trust. There's there's a executive session today at today's board meeting. I, I would I think it's gonna be about that. It's a little fuzzy in the way it's noticed, but I think it's about the request from Rero to cen censure him. I think the one thing to watch for is whether they actually commission a full investigation into these allegations, which if they don't do and take any action against him, it's totally outrageous. Talk about Trumpian. But, so we'll see what happens.

Brandon Pryor: 27:12

Because I remember when they sent te they went through a whole investigation that cost, hundreds of thousands of dollars and, so we'll see what happens. It's gonna be real interesting.

Alan Gottlieb: 27:25

Yep. Brandon, really appreciate your coming on and talking to us, and I want everybody who's listening to this to know that if you're inside DPS and you know anything or think there's stuff that people need to know your secrets are safe with, I think it's safe to say anyone of the three of us. We will put the link to Brandon's website at the bottom of this post so that you know how to get to him. You can get to us through Board Hawk and. Keep fighting the fight, Brandon, and I'm sure someday I'll say something that'll piss you off and you'll come after me and I'm a 69-year-old white guy and I'm near the end of my working life and I don't care either. I'm like you at this point. I've got nothing to lose. That's right. I love it. We can make common cause. I love it.

Brandon Pryor: 28:06

There we go. I so much, I appreciate you guys having me, Alan and Alexis. I really appreciate you having me on. All right,

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 28:12

thanks Brandon. Take care.

Brandon Pryor: 28:14

All you guys have a.

Alan Gottlieb: 28:16

We're still on. If you wanna stay on for just a sec we stopped recording.