A major Colorado school district is under federal scrutiny for employment practices that critics say prioritize race over qualifications in educator hiring and advancement.
Defending Education filed a civil rights complaint Monday with the U.S. Department of Education alleging that Cherry Creek School District has engaged in race-based discrimination in employment. The complaint centers on a June 2023 agreement between the district and its teachers’ union known as the “Educators of Color Declaration.”
Cherry Creek School District serves approximately 52,000 students and represents Colorado’s fourth-largest school system, covering more than 300,000 residents in the southeast Denver metropolitan area.
The declaration commits both the school district and the teachers’ union to recruiting, retaining, and advancing educators of color. However, the same agreement contains a separate provision calling for recruitment, hiring, and advancement to be based on qualifications without regard to race, creating what critics describe as contradictory policy directives.
Sarah Parshall Perry, Vice President and Senior Legal Fellow at Defending Education, stated that Cherry Creek Schools has incorporated racial preferences directly into its teachers’ contract. According to Perry, the district’s declaration commits it to recruiting, retaining, and promoting teachers based on skin color, which means other equally qualified teachers are passed over for the same reason.
Perry referenced the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions decision, noting that the court made clear the law is colorblind and that a school district cannot remedy a race-based hiring policy with generic equal opportunity language.
The legal challenge invokes Title VI, which prohibits race discrimination in federally funded programs under specified conditions. Title VII more directly governs employment discrimination. The legality of Cherry Creek’s teacher recruitment and advancement commitments will depend substantially on how those policies are implemented in practice.
According to the district’s negotiated agreement, the “Educators of Color Declaration” commits the district and its teachers’ union to intentionally recruiting highly qualified educators of color. The agreement also establishes a concerted effort to retain those educators already employed by the district and to help them advance into leadership positions.
This complaint arrives as the federal government has intensified scrutiny of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across educational institutions. The challenge to Cherry Creek’s policies represents the latest front in a broader national debate over whether race-conscious hiring and recruitment practices violate civil rights law.
The outcome of this complaint could establish important precedent for how school districts nationwide structure their teacher recruitment and advancement policies, particularly those that reference race as a factor in employment decisions.
