Board president to resign as school fights to survive

BRIGHTON – A charter high school board president is expected to tender his resignation Thursday after the school’s principal submitted answers regarding sexual allegations.

Brighton Charter High School Principal Chris McCandless answered questions from the Brighton District 27J school board. The questions stemmed from sexual allegations against two different teachers at the school. One is McCandless’ wife, Carrie McCandless, and the other is board president David Mundy Sr.’s son, David Wayne Mundy Jr.

Following the release of the answers to the question, Mundy Sr. is expected to tender is resignation Thursday.

Principal McCandless stated in his response that because an allegation involved his wife, he "removed himself from the situation" leaving everything to be handled by the charter board president David Mundy Sr., who is now charged with tampering with a witness and failure to report sexual abuse.

Police say Carrie McCandless, the principal's wife, sexually assaulted a student in an Estes Park cabin on October 28 on a school hiking trip where she was the chaperone. However, it was not reported to authorities until November 2 after 9NEWS started investigating.

The principal stated that Mundy Sr. waited to tell Brighton police because of questions he had about the initial report. McCandless also wrote that Mundy Sr. never told the school district because he believed district officials already knew, though they did not.

At the last charter board meeting, parents called for Mundy Sr. to resign which he has now decided to do. The charter board will hold an emergency meeting Friday afternoon to make it official. The board's vice president Ken Mitchell hopes this move will solve some of the existing problems so the school can carry on.

In the written response, Principal McCandless admits his wife made mistakes in that "she failed to report the incident to school officials - and after returning to school - communicated inappropriately with the student."

He also believes, "The charter school did not provide the quality of notice to the school district that it should have."

The other incident involved a substitute teacher, David Mundy Jr. The charter board president's son pleaded guilty to charges of sexual assault on a child and contributing to the delinquency of a minor while partying with three girls, ages 14-to-16, at his apartment last year. One of the girls was a student.

Principal McCandless wrote that those allegations were never reported to the school because the board president's son was not a regular employee.

The charter school currently has a contract with the Brighton school district until 2009, but it can be revoked if the district school board believes these actions breached the contract.

The district school board will review all these answers with the charter school at an open meeting on Monday.