{"id":13865,"date":"2026-01-21T18:26:43","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T01:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-school-board-hears-teachers-concerns-about-high-school-reading-levels\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:41:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:41:03","slug":"cortez-school-board-hears-teachers-concerns-about-high-school-reading-levels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-school-board-hears-teachers-concerns-about-high-school-reading-levels\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez school board hears teacher\u2019s concerns about high school reading levels"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"At
At their Tuesday night board meeting, the board addressed a variety of items, including reading, UIP plans and more. (Screen capture via Zoom)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

At its Tuesday night meeting, the Montezuma\u2011Cortez RE\u20111 School Board held its first meeting without former superintendent Tom Burris, with new superintendent Eddie Ramirez seated at the board table. The board discussed reading levels, the strategic plan, community use of school facilities and other topics.<\/p>\n

At the start of the meeting, the board celebrated several items, including the recent success of district sports teams and school board recognition month.<\/p>\n

During citizen comments, Cassidy Proctor addressed the board about the need for reading interventionists at the high school. She said many of her students are struggling with reading.<\/p>\n

In the second quarter of the school year, 35% of Proctor\u2019s students failed the class. Of those students, 25% are not reaching reading expectations, 22% are partially meeting them and 18% are approaching expectations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat means 65% of my students who failed quarter two are not reading at grade level. The grade level expectation for reading is one of, if not the main, reason that they failed the class,\u201d Proctor said.<\/p>\n

Proctor said the district needs to hire a reading interventionist for the high school to help students reach grade\u2011level reading.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe theory is that in third grade and below, you\u2019re learning to read, and then in third grade and above, you\u2019re reading to learn. If we have kids who are performing at an elementary school or below third grade reading level, then they aren\u2019t at the place where they can read to learn,\u201d Proctor said.<\/p>\n

Next, a parent identified only as Jennifer addressed the board about her homeschooled daughter. Jennifer said her daughter used to attend Montezuma\u2011Cortez High School but no longer does. She requested that her daughter be allowed to participate in the band, along with other homeschool students who want to join extracurricular activities the school offers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do believe that if that schools and the district allows and welcomes these students, these children, to participate, that this will encourage them to come back to the schools, to have their families have a good relationship with the school district that so many of us in this community are part of \u2026 We want to be part of it, but we also want to have an appropriate education for our children,\u201d Jennifer said.<\/p>\n

Following citizen comments, the board discussed the issues raised.<\/p>\n

Board member Mike Lynch spoke about reading concerns and called the situation \u201ctragic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a huge problem, and we need to solve it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can\u2019t continue graduating seniors who can\u2019t read properly. It\u2019ll affect the rest of their lives \u2026 We definitely have to do something about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynch also addressed the question of extracurricular participation for non\u2011enrolled students, saying he had an idea that does not \u201cguarantee it can help anything,\u201d but that he planned to share it with Ramirez.<\/p>\n

He then brought up the strategic plan goals adopted by the previous board, which address communication, self\u2011evaluations, training and goals for charter schools. Lynch called the goals the district\u2019s \u201cNorth Star.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are an aggregation of ideas, suggestions, solutions and comments on how to improve our district,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Some deadlines for the goals are approaching, he added, but said the new board members would not be held accountable because they recently started their service.<\/p>\n

Before moving to action items, board member Laura DeWitt noted the lack of typical administrative reports, such as from the superintendent or finance director, calling it an \u201canomaly.\u201d She said those reports, along with student representative reports, will return at the next meeting.<\/p>\n

The board then moved to action items, including a first reading of a policy outlining community use of school facilities, including fees and usage priorities.<\/p>\n

Although there was initial confusion about fees listed in the policy, Lynch clarified that the fees are a lump sum per event, not hourly, and that there is no fee for school\u2011related or student\u2011focused activities such as booster club or PTA events.<\/p>\n

The policy will be reviewed further before returning for a vote.<\/p>\n

The board approved the fiscal year 2025\u201326 salary schedule amendment and the revised budget, with Lynch voting against the revised budget.<\/p>\n

After discussing the district\u2019s Unified Improvement Plan, DeWitt made a motion to table the UIP until the next meeting and asked administration to provide documents showing \u201csubstantive\u201d stakeholder input from educators, the District Accountability Committee and the School Accountability Committee.<\/p>\n

The motion passed, with Lynch voting against it.<\/p>\n

The next Montezuma\u2011Cortez School Board meeting will be held Tuesday, Feb. 17 at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

celebrates school board recognition month<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,155,28,60,216,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-13865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13865","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=13865"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19201,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13865\/revisions\/19201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13865"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=13865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}