AURORA, Colo. — Supporters of Amiir Horton, a former Smoky Hill High School student who was expelled following a school fight, created a petition calling on the Cherry Creek School District to allow the teen to re-enroll in public school.
“My goal with the petition is really to get the word out and see how many other families who have been affected by this and see if we can really hold Cherry Creek Schools accountable for their actions,” said Christian Caldwell, Horton's uncle and president of My Brother’s and Sister’s Keeper Colorado.
Caldwell said Horton's expulsion stems from a 40-second fight. Video of the fight reveals Horton, 16, hit another male student first.
“It was a verbal fight, more than an actual fight. But you know, he was saying that he didn't like me and whatnot. And I didn't really care because not everybody's gonna like you. But he kept saying it as if he wanted to get under my skin. And eventually it did, which led me to confront him about it, asking him if he had an actual problem with me or not. And from there is when it led up to us having a fight,” Horton said.
Horton admits he threw the first punch and said he is remorseful.
“(Administrators) pulled me out of class and showed me the video and said, ‘Do you know anything about this?’ And whatnot. And that's when they said, ‘You're suspended for five days, but you can make it three if you talk with the other boy and resolve the issue.' Which I was willing to do. But then it resulted in an expulsion,” Horton said.
Horton and his mother, Tieda Younger, said they were surprised by the punishment.
“It was a fight. It was also the last week of school. It was a mutual fight. So I was a little surprised that it led to an expulsion,” Younger said.
Younger said her surprise turned to confusion during Horton's first expulsion hearing when a rumor about her son having a knife surfaced in an expulsion report.
“In the report, it said that it came from another student at another school in another district. It was just a rumor. They never found a knife or anything. So there was, we still don't know where that came from,” Younger said.
Audio from an expulsion hearing confirmed no evidence of a knife was ever found.
In response to a due process complaint stemming from Horton's case, the district outlined his background in the district.
According to the document, Horton has been a student of CCSD since 2012. In 8th grade, the document said Horton was diagnosed with ADHD. But Younger said her son was never given accommodations for his disability.
The document also said during his time in the district, he had one other out-of-school suspension and at least one in-school suspension over the span of 10.5 years.
“I think from the documents, they're making it seem like I'm such a bad kid and I fight just to fight and I do this just to do that. But like my mom said, in all the meetings we've had, all of the teachers that I've had, they've all said that I was a great kid. And I wasn’t purposely causing trouble,” Horton said.
In audio from a June 7 hearing, Horton's freshman football coach said over the teen's high school career, they discussed expectations for behavior. The coach said this behavior was not what he perceived as normal behavior for Horton and said video of the fight shocked him.
Caldwell said even though administrators did not consider Horton to have an extensive disciplinary record, the one mention of the rumored knife in the initial report had a major impact.
"We tried to apply Amir for public schools, and they denied the submissions because of the expulsion,” Caldwell said.
In a statement, a Cherry Creek School District representative said Horton was granted early readmittance effective September 11.
The Cherry Creek School District’s expulsion process is determined by state statute and Board of Education policies. It works to balance the safety of students and staff in school with our legal requirement to provide a fair and equitable public education to all students. Expulsions are based solely on an individual student’s behavior, actions and adherence, or lack thereof, to CCSD board policies. Every expulsion decision follows the same process, which begins with a comprehensive investigation by the school into the alleged misconduct followed by an impartial hearing with the student, their family, and the student’s legal representation.
Most of our expulsions are for less than a year and many students seek and are granted early readmittance to school, as long as they demonstrate corrected behavior.
In this case, the student in question was expelled for physically assaulting another student under Board Policies JICDA (8) & (19), JICDB (1), and JKD-1-E (3). The student was granted early readmittance effective Sept. 11, 2023, to enable him to enroll in the district where he resides.
But Caldwell said his nephew’s case is an example of unfair treatment of students of color within the district.
“So there's a pattern going on throughout the state that Cherry Creek expels kids to color, and then push them off into everybody else's district... my nephew became one of these statistics now. It's just truly, truly disheartening,” Caldwell said.
According to statistics from the Colorado Department of Education, during the 2021-2022 school year, 104 Black and Latino students were expelled from the Cherry Creek School District compared to 39 white students.
Horton's attorney, Charmaine Lindsay, who is also a member of the Denver Public Schools Board of Education, said this is her second case involving an expulsion from CCSD.
"This hostility had been brewing for several days. So when I read the first page, and it's talking about knife threats, and it's talking about him repeatedly assaulting this boy as if it was just a one-sided incident, then I read the witness statements, read through the entire packet... The first page, which is what most people read completely inflammatory, was nothing resembling their own evidence that they had compiled together in this big packet," Lindsay said. "Unfortunately, I didn't get involved until after the expulsion had already taken place. And it's a lot harder to go through the appellate process. So... we had that (individualized education program) evaluation done. And we're appealing that ruling because there's claiming they can go back to elementary school and claim that him needing an IEP plan wasn't the cause of him getting in this fight, even though it has never been dealt with."
Lindsay said the individualized education program (IEP) evaluation stemmed from Horton's ADHD diagnosis.
Younger said Amiir is eligible to go through an expulsion program and continue his learning but said they’re declining that option.
“Because that would say, for me, it would signify that he did something horrendous enough to be expelled. Granted, he shouldn't have been in the fight. He's taken accountability for that. But it was a fight. He's a 16-year-old boy, things happen,” Younger said.
Horton hopes to enroll in a new school district, while Younger hopes her son's expulsion doesn’t define his future.
