A boys’ restroom at Addenbrooke Classical Academy in Lakewood, Colorado, carried graffiti in May 2025 that referred to a “slave auction” and “Blacks for sale”, along with a sexually violent threat that used a racial slur. It named five male students of color. The music teacher who reported it was fired days later, and on Friday he sued.
Nick Newman taught at the charter school for a year. In early May 2025, students told him what was written in the restroom, and several of the boys named were in his classes. He went to the school’s mental health counselor, then filed a report on May 4 with Safe2Tell, Colorado’s anonymous school safety line. He asked for anonymity because he feared losing his job, according to CBS Colorado’s account of the suit.
On May 15, Principal John Byrne and Executive Director Ric Netzer called him into an office and put a printed copy of the report in front of him. Newman says they asked: “Why do you care? Some of these kids aren’t your students. Why do you care?” The school ended his employment on May 20. He had already signed a contract to come back and had been building curriculum for next year.
Addenbrooke denies it retaliated. It says it had performance concerns about Newman before the report. It does not dispute that administrators discussed the Safe2Tell report with him; the school has said it suspected he wrote it from what the report contained. His attorney, Steven Murray, argues the firing punished protected speech and discrimination reporting, and the suit makes First Amendment and anti-discrimination claims.
The same wall is the subject of a second lawsuit. Jaylen Davis, a Black student who was 16 that year, sued Addenbrooke, Byrne and Netzer in federal court on Sept. 30. His complaint says classmates touched his hair without permission, gave him a stress ball shaped like a monkey, and that his name was on the restroom wall. It accuses the two administrators of locking the restroom and painting over the graffiti rather than telling Davis and his mother. Davis, now 18, did not go back and finished his junior year online because his family did not own a car.
These are allegations, and neither case has been tried. But the school’s own account puts the two adults in a room with a teacher’s anonymous report about threats against Black children, and what it describes is a conversation about who made the report.
That is the part that matters to every Black parent whose child sits in a classroom where only one adult will speak up. A school that treats the reporter as the problem teaches its staff to stay quiet the next time. Colorado’s education department and the district that oversees the charter should say whether anyone reviewed how Addenbrooke handled the threats. Both suits are pending in court.
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