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Parents and students press Academy District 20 board for accountability after member read explicit passages at student forum, files suit against a parent
Summary
Dozens of parents, students and community members used the meeting’s public-comment periods to call on the Academy District 20 Board of Education to hold a board member accountable for reading sexually explicit passages at a student forum and for filing a defamation suit against a parent who criticized his actions.
Dozens of parents, students and community members used the meeting’s public-comment periods to call on the Academy District 20 Board of Education to hold a board member accountable for reading sexually explicit passages aloud at a student-led candidate forum in October 2023 and for subsequently suing a constituent who publicly criticized that conduct.
The comments were delivered by students, parents and grandparents who said the passages were inappropriate for the audience and caused lasting distress. “He tore away the rights of every parent in that room to protect their children,” said Connor Lesh, a freshman at Pine Creek High School, referring to the October forum video that remains on the district’s YouTube channel. “It truly disappoints me that Mister Wilburn is willing to say these things without even an apology,” Lesh added.
Multiple speakers stated that the board member later filed a defamation lawsuit against a parent who publicly criticized him about the forum. “Now he has the audacity to try to stop Bernadette from speaking and to silence one of his constituents,” said Rob Rogers, who is organizing community legal support for the parent. Community members described a GoFundMe campaign that has raised money for the parent’s legal defense.
Speakers included Elizabeth Guthrie, who said she left a prior meeting after seeing the board member in the audience and later learned her family had been affected; Bernadette Pittman, who described her granddaughter’s panic attack after seeing the board member in the room; and Donita Guthrie, who said the incident “traumatized” her granddaughter. Student host Safran Stevens, who organized a candidate forum, said the candidate who read the passages refused to apologize when asked later and is now using litigation against dissent.
At least one public speaker asked trustees to use the district’s existing governance procedures to investigate and, if warranted, remove or demand the resignation of the board member. Several callers also named state law protections for free speech and referenced Colorado’s anti-SLAPP protections in arguing the lawsuit against a parent was an improper attempt to silence criticism.
Board members did not take public action on the comments during the meeting. Trustees discussed governance policy GP 4.12 (process for addressing board member violations) elsewhere on the agenda; a motion to remove a sentence that the monitoring report characterized as saying “there were no BOE member violations during this monitoring period” was moved and approved earlier in the meeting and will be reflected in the monitoring record.
The public comment session drew sustained local attention and repeated calls for the board to provide a public accounting of how the district will prevent student exposure to material deemed inappropriate by parents. Several speakers said they would not accept private apologies and instead want policy-level accountability.
The board did not announce any immediate disciplinary steps at the close of public comment. Several community members asked the board to place a governance-policy review and a potential censure or other formal action on a future agenda.
