A year after Jeffco’s teachers union called on Superintendent Tracy Dorland to resign, Dorland has announced she is stepping down in July. 

The news comes after years of turmoil over school safety and sexual abuse scandals — amplified by an alarming school safety audit only now coming to light. 

A safety audit of Jeffco Schools’ Gmail and Google Drive activity over a 75-day period in spring 2025 analyzed nearly 19 million items across 81,000 student accounts. Of roughly 36,300 flagged for human review by the online school-safety management software Gaggle, 3,241 constituted actionable incidents. 

Of those, 3,088 were classified as “Questionable Content” (QCON): concerning issues such as cyberbullying, professional pornography, graphic stories, and references to suicide, self-harm or past drug use — without evidence of an imminent threat.  

“Our audits are designed to surface warning signs that exist inside district-managed technology,” Gaggle said. “These signs are often present but go undetected without a dedicated monitoring and review process.” 

Another 153 Jeffco incidents constituted “Possible Student Situations” (PSS), revealing imminent threats. A sixth grader wrote a detailed suicidal note. A file titled “Untitled Presentation” contained a hit list with 15 names. Other incidents involved active self-harm, home abuse, drug use and potential acts of violence. 

The vast majority were among middle schoolers — 67% of QCONs and 77% of PSS incidents. 

In response to my emailed questions, Gaggle said this reflects a “broader trend” nationally of middle schoolers “navigating some of the most acute mental health and social stress of their academic careers” and increasingly expressing that distress through school-issued digital tools. 

One thing is clear: Many Jeffco students are in serious distress. 

The audit was conducted at no cost by Gaggle, a national leader in school safety monitoring, using AI to flag material of interest for human review. The company identifies and communicates concerns; intervention decisions are left to the district. 

The volume is extraordinary: 153 imminent-threat incidents over 10 weeks on district-issued technology — roughly two or three per school day. 

Based on Gaggle’s national data — an average of 9.85 PSS incidents per month for districts with 25,000 students — a district Jeffco’s size should expect to see roughly 80 such incidents over that same period. Jeffco logged 153, nearly double the average. 

While Gaggle acknowledged seasonal patterns play a role, it underscored the findings as “serious” and deserving “prompt attention.” 

The audit was obtained through an open records request by Lindsay Datko, founder of parent group Jeffco Kids First — only after she encountered surprising hurdles. 

Datko was initially told that Gaggle “recommended that we only receive paper copies and then destroy them when we deemed appropriate.” Jeffco claimed to follow this recommendation and “destroyed the paper copies after the meeting.” 

Yet days later, the district provided Datko the report after all, claiming staff “reasonably believed the report no longer existed” but that, during an email search, “the District discovered that a Gaggle employee had retained a copy of the report and emailed it to district leadership.” 

Gaggle flatly contradicted the district’s account, noting its reports are designed not to reveal students’ personally identifiable information so district leaders can “share the audit more broadly.” 

“Gaggle would never instruct districts to destroy audit findings or other records in order to conceal information from families, governing bodies, or the public,” the company told me. 

Why did Jeffco Schools spin a detailed story claiming the audit was destroyed — only to turn around with an “actually, we found it” excuse? Did they do anything with the findings? 

Open records releases are often reviewed by the district’s legal team. Did the response involve General Counsel Julie Tolleson? If so, what changed in three days? 

“The safety audit provided to district leadership 30 days before a campus shooting unfolds an alarming reality,” Datko told me. “We are calling on the board to publish the audit for public review, explain why it disappeared, and present a robust plan detailing how it will be addressed.” 

Tolleson has been at the center of several district controversies. Most recently, her office responded to a federal Title IX discrimination finding by stalling rather than admitting any wrongdoing. 

Datko has called for Tolleson’s resignation. 

Jeffco has already demonstrated difficulty responding to known safety concerns, including the lead-up to last year’s shooting at Evergreen High School and the failure to ensure a full-time school resource officer was present. 

Parents are fed up with endless sexual abuse and misconduct cases, enabled by “trusted adult” policies fueling a culture of secrecy — previously overseen by Chief of Schools David Weiss, who died by suicide while under investigation for child pornography. Jeffco Kids First has identified well over 30 abuse cases. 

For many parents, Dorland’s departure is overdue after a troubled tenure. Yet former board member Susan Miller — the sole nonunion member on the board when Dorland was hired — offers a more nuanced view, arguing Dorland worked to change a culture that “honored longevity rather than merit” against steep challenges. 

“She faced those challenges, brought in people with expertise from beyond Jeffco to right the ship,” Miller told me. “The headwind she faced was a union that had controlled the board for close to a decade.”  

Replacing Dorland “will be a challenge,” she warned, given heavy union control and a diminished talent pool. “There is a saying, ‘Culture kills strategy,’” she added. “The culture must be acknowledged.” 

The safety audit makes one thing clear: The next superintendent will inherit a district in perpetual crisis. Will the board ever show the will to finally confront it? 

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.