Anna Donovan has worked for Durango School District for four years. She was told in March that she will be out of a job by August.
Her role as a counselor and classroom teacher is among many affected by a districtwide restructuring driven by declining enrollment and budget pressures.
Enrollment in the district’s brick-and-mortar schools has dropped by 365 students over the past five years, and about $2 million in cuts are needed to bring expenses in line with revenue, district spokeswoman Karla Sluis told The Durango Herald. Superintendent Karen Cheser said about 160 students have left since the start of this year.
The district declined to say in early March how many employees have been laid off or how many positions will be affected, but said a range of positions, including administrative and support staff, will be impacted. Sluis later told the Herald that 25 administrative positions had been cut as of mid-March.
“Restructuring can feel personal, but these decisions are driven by enrollment and funding realities – not a lack of care for our staff,” she told the Herald in an email.
Donovan, who is a certified licensed professional counselor, was first hired at Park Elementary School and moved this school year into a counseling role at Animas Valley Elementary. She said her contract will not be renewed at the end of the school year.
The layoff is financially stressful, Donovan said, because her husband is unemployed and has cancer, and she provides the family’s only health insurance.
“I was the sole breadwinner,” she said. “I held our family’s health insurance, and now we have none of that. It’s very impactful.”
Donovan said her husband’s illness is being treated and he is stable, but it’s a chronic condition and requires ongoing care supported by health insurance.
She plans to remain in Durango for at least two more years so her son, a student at Animas High School, can graduate. That somewhat limits her professional opportunities to jobs in the area.
She may pursue opening a private practice, she said, but health insurance would not be available through that route, and she expects she would still need to get an additional part-time job to make ends meet.
She said she isn’t interested in seeking another role in the district or attempting to be rehired because she has felt financially underappreciated in her roles at Park Elementary and Animas Valley.
Donovan, who holds a master’s degree, said her work includes both classroom teaching and counseling services, yet she is paid on a general teacher’s salary. She started with a yearly salary of about $54,000 and was able to negotiate up to $62,000 after four years with the district, she said.
According to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, a livable yearly salary in La Plata County for a family of three is just over $88,000.
Donovan said she’s concerned about how staffing changes may affect students.
She sees dozens of students daily as a classroom teacher and Animas Valley Elementary’s sole counselor.
“I teach all their classes, and I do all their small groups, and I do all the family outreach and support for individual needs and crisis,” she said. “They won’t have any of that.”
She said the district plans to rely on school administrators and a social worker who visits once a week.
The social worker assists only students in the Individualized Education Program, while Donovan works with both IEP and general education students, she said – meaning non-IEP students may lose access to school-based support after her contract ends in August.
“(The impacts) will be felt beyond elementary if we lose counselors,” she said. “Children learn social-emotional skills to manage their emotions and deal with conflict and all of those things in elementary school, and if they don’t learn them in elementary school, then they don’t know how to do those things in middle school, or in high school.”
Sluis said part of the district’s restructuring involves “aligning staffing with student enrollment across schools,” and that it’s not financially sustainable to maintain both a full-time counselor and a full-time assistant principal at the small, 147-student school.
“At AVES, the assistant principal role also supports Shared School and will help provide student support services as part of a team-based approach,” she told the Herald in an email. “In addition, district social workers will continue to provide targeted counseling support for students with specialized needs.”
Sluis said there is a counseling position open at Park Elementary that “individuals may choose to pursue.”
Donovan said she opposes the staff changes being made and believes leadership must be more intentional about the impacts on staff members who are “on the ground doing the work.”
“(The district) keep(s) far more in reserves than they need, money that could be used to provide stability and safety in lives like mine that are entirely reliant on my sole paycheck and health benefits to keep my family afloat,” she said. “They seem to treat people like chess pawns that they can move around at whim, letting people go, reassigning them, then scrambling to rehire.”
Sluis said the district’s reserves are intended for financial emergencies.
“Maintaining a healthy reserve is a standard and necessary practice for public school districts,” she said. “These funds are not excess dollars available for ongoing expenses like salaries – they are what allow a district to remain financially stable during economic downturns, funding fluctuations, or unexpected costs.”
The district chose not to refill about 13 vacated positions beginning last spring, before the most recent wave of staffing changes, and nearly half were mental health or behavior-related roles, according to a budget presentation at a recent Board of Education work session at Park Elementary School.
Several other roles, including a chief academic officer, were also not refilled.
“We recognize how deeply our counselors care about students, and we understand that staffing changes can be difficult for both staff and families,” Sluis said. “We are grateful for the important work happening every day in our schools to support student well-being.”
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