{"id":107758,"date":"2015-12-10T04:00:32","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T11:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/parents-students-confront-re-1-board-over-coachs-release\/"},"modified":"2015-12-10T04:00:32","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T11:00:32","slug":"parents-students-confront-re-1-board-over-coachs-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/parents-students-confront-re-1-board-over-coachs-release\/","title":{"rendered":"Parents, students confront Re-1 board over coach\u2019s release"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Montezuma-Cortez
Montezuma-Cortez High School swimmers and parents meet with principal Jason Wayman in November.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

During a mostly civil exchange, parents and students criticized Montezuma-Cortez Re-1 district\u2019s top athletic official on Tuesday, claiming that politics and favoritism were motivating factors in the dismissal of four high school coaches this semester.<\/p>\n

With a rare standing room only crowd, people crammed inside two doorways to get a peek inside the Montezuma-Cortez school board meeting this week as some two dozen parents and students showed up to speak. An overwhelming majority of the comments were related to the recent termination of M-CHS swim coach Ian MacLaren.<\/p>\n

MacLaren was not retained as the high school swim coach in November after he allegedly violated two Colorado High School Activities Association regulations during last year\u2019s swim season. He also was the sports editor at The Journal from June 2013 to May 2015.<\/p>\n

One of the alleged violations included missing paperwork from volunteer parent-coach Candi Duran, who was the first to voice concerns at the board meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 8.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find it very concerning that only a few parents and swimmers were heard in this firing process, and the rest of the parents and swimmers were not consulted,\u201d said Duran, who was flanked by several members of the M-CHS swim team.<\/p>\n

Mother to three current swimmers, Duran said athletic director Stacey Hall had failed to notify her or MacLaren about the missing documents, claiming that disgruntled parents were responsible for his termination.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is Ian the only one taking the fall for this?\u201d Duran asked board members.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce again, Cortez finds itself settling for mediocrity,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have a new school but the same old mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duran also praised MacLaren\u2019s success as a swim coach, stating that he led the team to the state championship last year for the first time in more than 15 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had six state qualifiers and broke six high school records last year,\u201d Duran said, adding that MacLaren\u2019s termination had completely derailed the team.<\/p>\n

Several swimmers also told board members that MacLaren had been one of the most caring, giving and influential people in their lives, in and out of the pool.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe expects excellence in every area of our life,\u201d said a 17-year-old swimmer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIan is more than just a phenomenal swim coach, he\u2019s also a phenomenal human being,\u201d said the team\u2019s co-captain.<\/p>\n

Asked by board president Jack Schuenemeyer how many people in attendance held similar attitudes, nearly everyone raised their hand. Three parents, however, supported the decision to release MacLaren, stating he had been dishonest with administrators.<\/p>\n

After voicing initial concerns to high school Principal Jason Wayman, parents and student-athletes subsequently met with Superintendent Alex Carter. The athletes said they believed that speaking to the school board was the final stage in the grievance process, but those in attendance on Tuesday appeared flabbergasted after learning that the board had no control over the hiring decisions of coaches.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is where they said we could get a solution,\u201d one woman said.<\/p>\n

After the meeting, board member Mike Tanner said he understood the community\u2019s annoyance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people feel like they wasted their time and efforts,\u201d said Tanner. \u201cIt was frustrating for the community and the board.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked by a parent on Tuesday about his thoughts, Carter said he wished parents would focus their energy on ensuring academic success for students rather than athletic coaching decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cAthletics are great, and they are important,\u201d Carter said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe exist as a school district to try and improve reading, writing and math and prepare people for college and careers,\u201d he continued. \u201cThat\u2019s my goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

To improve feedback and evaluation of coaches, Wayman unveiled a systematic five-item action plan at Tuesday meeting. The plan includes pre-season meetings with coaches, documenting all issues when they arise, observing coaches during practice, conducting a post-season survey of student-athletes and parents and post-season interviews with coaches.<\/p>\n

According to Wayman, who is married to Hall\u2019s niece, the high school is also forming an athletics task force to help guide the future and current state of the school\u2019s athletic department.<\/p>\n

In September, first-year head football coach Dave Wagner was ousted after parent-volunteer coaches complained of the play calls during the team\u2019s season opener loss. That same month, the head high school volleyball coach and her assistant were fired.<\/p>\n

tbaker@the-journal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

was fourth M-CHS termination this year<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13,216,93],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-107758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1","tag-students"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107758"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=107758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}