Families sue Douglas County schools over bias response

Legal filing alleges discrimination, inaction

BY MCKENNA HARFORD MHARFORD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

ree families are suing the Douglas County School District over its response to a pattern of what is being described as racial abuse at Castle Rock Middle School and Douglas County High School.

Filed Aug. 2 in the U.S. District Court for Colorado, the complaint alleges numerous students and sta at the schools targeted four Black or biracial students with harassment, racial slurs and threats, depriving them of equal access to education.

Parents of the students led the complaint. e complaint de- scribes experiences of the children of Lacey Ganzy, Jon and Misty Martin, and Nadarian and Alexis Clark. It lists Douglas County School District, the school board and Castle Rock Middle School e children are not named in the lawsuit to protect their privacy. e complaint argues that the racial harassment of the students is a consequence of a district culture that doesn’t value educational equity, speci cally alleging School Board President Mike Peterson and board members Kaylee Winegar, Becky Myers and Christy Williams contributed to that culture. e complaint says the district violated the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment by denying equal educational opportunities to the students involved.

Principal John Viet as defendants.

Instead of a speci ed amount in the lawsuit, the families are re- questing a jury trial to determine damages owed.

“Indeed, in a glaring act of callousness, the School District and Board of Education have yet to take formal action in their entity capacities, and many individual Board Members have yet to condemn these well-documented injustices,” the complaint says. “ e indi erence of School District leaders explains how such levels of hate and racism were permitted to fester.”

In April, Ganzy and her son reported a group chat of more than 100 Castle Rock Middle School students where some allegedly used the n-word, threatened to shoot Black people, shared racist memes and spoke about bringing back the Holocaust.

Ganzy’s daughter, who was

When Commissioner Abe Laydon voiced support for creating a water commission, his colleague, George Teal, agreed.

“ e people of Douglas County do care about water resources, and they want their county commissioners involved,” Teal told Colorado Community Media.

Commissioner Lora omas opposes forming a water commission, calling it “totally unnecessary, a waste of time and e ort and money.”

“You don’t do a water commission that’s going to be no cost,” omas said. e forming of the new body comes against the backdrop of a controversial proposal to pump about 22,000 acrefeet of water per year to Douglas County from the San Luis Valley, a region of Southern Colorado. (An acre-foot is the equivalent of a one-foot-deep pool about the size of a football eld.) Renewable Water Resources is the private company that proposed the project.

Last year, Laydon joined omas in deciding not to move forward with that project while Teal continues to support it.

“Everything’s on the table as far as I’m concerned,” Teal said in early August. “We get another ve or six years of rainy summers, OK, maybe then we can start to be picky and choosy.”