{"id":15612,"date":"2025-11-19T16:39:54","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T23:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-board-hears-from-teacher-ratifies-cde-administrative-unit\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:49:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:49:21","slug":"montezuma-cortez-board-hears-from-teacher-ratifies-cde-administrative-unit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-board-hears-from-teacher-ratifies-cde-administrative-unit\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez board hears from teacher, ratifies CDE administrative unit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"English
English teacher Samuel Thomas speaks to the board about his classroom and fellow educators during Tuesday night\u2019s meeting. (Zoom screen capture)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

At their meeting Tuesday the Montezuma-Cortez RE-1 school board heard testimony from a teachers, approved a superintendent\u2019s contract and ratified a Colorado Department of Education decision allowing the district to become its own administrative unit.<\/p>\n

The board entered executive session to obtain legal advice and negotiate contract terms. Afterward, the board approved a contract for incoming Superintendent Eddie Ramirez, with an end date of June 30, 2028. Five members voted in favor of the contract, and two others, Paul Beckler and Jason Hall, voted against.<\/p>\n

Board President Sheri Noyes celebrated the finalized agreement, noting there would be no more contract meetings. Deb Ramsey, executive assistant to the superintendent and board, presented plaques to Superintendent Tom Burris and outgoing members honoring their service.<\/p>\n

At the December meeting, new members will be sworn in. Mike Lynch will remain on the board.<\/p>\n

The board also recognized last weekend\u2019s middle school play, an FFA trip to Washington, D.C., and a successful Family Engagement Night.<\/p>\n

In his report, Burris offered advice to incoming members and discussed recent personnel issues. He urged the board to care for all students, including ESS students and students of color.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are not riffraff and thugs, they are all children, souls, that you are responsible to educate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He warned against \u201centitled\u201d parents and \u201celite\u201d classes that limit access to top academic honors. Burris said teachers should prepare lesson plans and \u201caddress all students\u2019 needs\u201d and cautioned against micromanaging staff.<\/p>\n

He noted \u201cseveral\u201d recent personnel issues involved law enforcement \u201cwhen appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the \u2018community\u2019 might want the transparency, it is not ethical to release disciplinary action to the public,\u201d Burris said.<\/p>\n

After reports from the assistant superintendent and finance director, Exceptional Student Services coordinator Lisa Megel updated the board on special education training held Nov. 4 and additional training scheduled Dec. 12 with Elena Gallegos. She said district nurses now use iPads to monitor blood sugar levels of students with diabetes without disrupting classrooms.<\/p>\n

During public comment, Kasey Hamerschlag raised concerns about the strategic plan lacking preschool action steps needed to support literacy outcomes. English teacher Samuel Thomas thanked the board for its honesty in presenting recent test scores.<\/p>\n

Thomas said that honesty inspired him to share scores with students, who are now \u201crising to the challenge\u201d to improve. He emphasized \u201cprogress, not perfection.\u201d<\/p>\n

He praised fellow teachers for focusing on academics and \u201cbuild into students\u2019 character,\u201d and administrators like Principal Jennifer Boniface for fostering trust.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really proud of the teachers I work with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Thomas invited skeptics to visit his classroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love my calling, and my door is always open,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you want to see the work that is happening in the school \u2026 please call and make an appointment, come visit and ask for Mr. Thomas\u2019s class. My door is always open.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Noyes and Ed Rice responded emotionally.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to thank you. That\u2019s going to be one of the last things I hear on this board, so thank you,\u201d Noyes said.<\/p>\n

Rice, a retired educator, reflected on relationships with students.<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciate the relationships too that you talked about \u2026 unless you taught, I don\u2019t think you can understand those relationships. I had a student from 20 years ago, married, has four kids now, decided to go back to get her teaching degree and six months ago \u2026 sorry,\u201d Rice said, tearfully. \u201cTold me to mark the date in December to walk the stage up in Laramie. So, that\u2019s about having relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n

In action items, the board approved a resolution ratifying the Colorado Department of Education decision allowing the district to separate from BOCES and form its own administrative unit.<\/p>\n

The resolution states: \u201cNow, therefore, we, the Board of Directors of M-CSD, hereby declares that it will accept the release from San Juan BOCES upon receipt of its granted petition from the CDE and will form its own administrative unit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next board meeting is Tuesday, Dec. 16, at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teacher\u2019s testimony about English studies moves board members<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15613,"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-15612","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\/15612","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=15612"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19749,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15612\/revisions\/19749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15612"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=15612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}