Resignation Of Denver HS Principal Leaves Students With Questions

DENVER, CO -- Students walked out of Manual High School this morning, in support for Nick Dawkins, a well-liked principal who abruptly resigned Friday after three-and-a-half years at the helm of the troubled school. Dawkins told Channel 7 he submitted his resignation after being put on leave while the district investigated staff complaints that Dawkins had contributed to a "hostile workplace."

While the district's official response to Dawkins's resignation has praised his contribution to the school, community members and students interpreted the investigation and events as a way to drive Dawkins out, they said.

Rumors swirled that Dawkins, who is the brother of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock's former security detail officer Detective Leslie Branch-Wise, was feeling the brunt of the mayor's retaliation against his sister for publicly accusing the mayor of sexual harassment.

Manual High School was closed in 2006 for low test scores, then reopened with promises that the new team could turn the school around. The school's enrollment dropped from 800 to 300.

Dawkins, who grew up nearby, said he returned to the school to teach, even though his colleagues warned him the school would likely "break me," he wrote in his letter.

“Before I came to Manual I was told by a leader, ‘You are going to ruin your career,'” Dawkins wrote in his resignation letter. “‘You are jumping from the frying pan into the fire. The school and kids down there are dying on the vine. There is a reason no one wants to lead there. It is highly likely you will fail.’

“After sleeping on it, I returned the next day with the statement, ‘I don’t think going back to my community and telling 300 kids we love them and haven’t forgot about them is a failure. And if that is failure and I ruin my career, I guess I will have to get another career. They deserve it,'” Dawkins wrote.

Hasira Ashemu, who organizes the Breaking Our Chains student leadership program for DPS, said the length of Dawkins's tenure at the school has been part of a pattern. Ashemu characterized himself as a long-time neighborhood friend of Dawkins.

"No principal at Manual has lasted longer than 32 months," Ashemu said. "At that point, your shelf life has been reached."

Ashemu blamed charter school proponents for wanting the neighborhood schools to fail. Already, Manual shares space in the building with the innovation school McAuliffe International School, which has a separate IB curriculum and "caters to the gentrified students of Northeast Denver," Ashemu said.

"I think [ending a principal's tenure at 3.5 years] is a purposeful, systemic, destabilitizing factor of particular schools, in order to further an agenda to allow for-profit corporations to come in."

Dawkins made public a letter to staff and teachers at the school, outlining the challenges this year has brought and his reason for resigning.

"I never thought I would leave Manual High School this school year. I was so looking forward to graduation and graduating next year’s class of seniors who was the first class I came in with," Dawkins wrote. "This year’s challenges have proved to be some of the most difficult I have ever encountered."

Dawkins said in his letter that one of the challenges was his quest to turn the school around from being among the district's lowest-rated schools. "We, like many other schools, were taken off-guard by the recent DPS SPF ratings as we started the school year. Our school was devastated by the results of the SPF as all the predictors we had up to that point showed us finally taking Manual to Green."

Dawkins said he received death threats after a football game against Weld Central, where Manual students reported a Confederate flag was displayed and Manual students claimed they were taunted. Weld Central students and administrators denied the accusations.

Dawkins said immigrant students and their parents were made anxious by President Donald Trump's executive order ending DACA and a gun was found in the school. A Thanksgiving Day fatal shooting in the Manual parking lot caused children to feel scared at school, he wrote.

Dawkins also said in a statement that he had disciplined his staff members for allowing tobacco and marijuana to be brought into the school in his absence, allegedly for a science experiment.

"One student asked me, 'Principal Dawkins, can we not be in the news for a little while,'" he wrote.

When the news of the DPS investigation hit, he said, he was put on leave without explanation and not allowed to enter the school.

“I was taken aback and I was hurt,” Dawkins said on the TV interview. “I think I was more hurt that, given my record of service, that I was asked to not be in the building for a while."

Dawkins did not mention his family relationship with Det. Branch-Wise, nor did he mention retaliation from Mayor Hancock, a Manual HS alumnus. Efforts to reach Dawkins were not successful.

Alex Renteria, spokesperson for DPS, did not get back to Patch emails Monday with answers to questions about the investigation and other questions from students and community members.

Read Dawkins's letter "Why I left Denver Public Schools" here:

This story will be updated. Please refresh for updates.

Correction: This story has been updated to identify McAuliffe International School as an innovation school.

Image Former Manual High School Principal Nick Dawkins via Denver Public Schools