{"id":21364,"date":"2025-07-19T20:48:06","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T02:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-school-board-hears-from-citizens-about-nonrenewal-of-teacher\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:06:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:06:04","slug":"montezuma-cortez-school-board-hears-from-citizens-about-nonrenewal-of-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-school-board-hears-from-citizens-about-nonrenewal-of-teacher\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez school board hears from citizens about nonrenewal of teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"At
At their Tuesday, the Montezuma-Cortez school board heard from concerned attendees about a teacher whose contract wasn\u2019t renewed for the upcoming school year. (Screen capture via YouTube)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

At the Montezuma-Cortez school board\u2019s summer meeting on Tuesday, the board heard from citizens concerned about the nonrenewal of a teacher, discussed clear bags and were informed of a board member\u2019s resignation.<\/p>\n

Superintendent\u2019s report<\/div>\n

Superintendent Tom Burris shared that there will be a \u201cSo You Want to be a School Board Member\u201d meeting Monday, Aug. 18, at 6 p.m. in the board room for those who are interested in joining the board. Burris said that Anne Keke, board president of the Aurora public schools and CASB board member, will facilitate the meeting.<\/p>\n

Citizens address the board<\/div>\n

Later, many parents, staff and members of the community voiced their thoughts and concerns regarding a Kemper Elementary teacher whose contract was not renewed for the upcoming school year.<\/p>\n

Letters from teachers and staff were read by volunteers, as the letters cited fear of potential retaliation if they spoke to the board in person.<\/p>\n

Two women named Valerie and Susan spoke of Nancy Shaw, the teacher, saying that she had made a \u201clasting and meaningful impact on countless students.\u201d Tess, who is a MCHS graduate and has two daughters in the district, said she is \u201cvery concerned\u201d with the \u201cexodus\u201d of teachers in the district, which she partly credited to a lack of confidence in the district administration and lack of support for teachers.<\/p>\n

Tess said the district needed to do better by teachers by \u201crecruiting these excellent educators our children desperately need,\u201d adding that Shaw had done amazing things with her own daughters while they were in her classroom.<\/p>\n

Tori also spoke of Nancy\u2019s impact via a letter she read on behalf of another.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet us not allow policy to override common sense and compassion, and let us not lose a remarkable educator because of technicalities that do not reflect her worth,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n

Nikki Crowley also read a letter for a staff member. The letter said that staff have been moved and reassigned to different locations across the district for speaking out, without warning.<\/p>\n

Crowley added her own thoughts at the end of the letter, saying that MCHS has lost 167 years\u2019 worth of experience with teachers who have left. Crowley also questioned the nonrenewal, asking if teachers at high steps on the salary schedule were being let go to save money.<\/p>\n

MB McAfee read a letter, which she read in part as it echoed what was said by others. She added that it was upsetting that \u201cteachers can\u2019t come to you and talk to you themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul and Laura DeWitt took turns speaking, with Paul saying he was alarmed about the \u201cgrowing sense of retaliation in the district.\u201d He also noted that Shaw had 40 years of teaching experience, over 30 of which are in the district.<\/p>\n

Laura shared that Shaw was her daughter\u2019s third-grade teacher this past school year, and she brought out the best in her students.<\/p>\n

Sherry Wright, former board member and current member of the state school board, said that Shaw had taught her granddaughters, but acknowledged that she didn\u2019t know what was going on behind the scenes in regard to the nonrenewal.<\/p>\n

Wright also informed the board that she and another member of the state board had written a letter to the state about keeping boys out of girl sports.<\/p>\n

Discussion Items<\/div>\n

In discussion items, one board member said he wanted to know why the contract was not renewed, to which Burris said, \u201cYou\u2019d have to read the Statutes on Return to Work Employees. That\u2019s where it lies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Board President Sheri Noyes reminded those in attendance that there are things going on behind the scenes, personnel things, that the board isn\u2019t at liberty to discuss.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of this stuff that came up at this podium, a lot of it are some things that I haven\u2019t heard,\u201d Noyes said. \u201cYou\u2019ve created a problem that really isn\u2019t a problem. It\u2019s things we\u2019re working on you may not be privy to because of certain protections. I\u2019m not saying all of it, but some of it is. That gets frustrating when we\u2019re not able to come right out and tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n

She asked that the community give the board some understanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd not that we don\u2019t want to sit here and tell you exactly what we\u2019re doing, it\u2019s that we can\u2019t sometimes,\u201d Noyes said. \u201cAnd we would appreciate a little bit of grace on some of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Board member Mike Lynch brought up the nondiscrimination policy, saying that this policy does not affect the district\u2019s policy ADD for Safe Schools, in response to comments about the district removing the word \u201csafe\u201d from the policy.<\/p>\n

He also looked at the clear bag policy, revisiting concerns about privacy for students. He asked if female hygiene products are in nursing stations and bathrooms, and asked if female students could use makeup bags or other small pencil bags to conceal their feminine hygiene products, if a clear bag policy was implemented.<\/p>\n

He noted that the biggest benefit of the clear bags would be for students to make it through metal detectors faster.<\/p>\n

After action items, the board said goodbye to Jim Parr, executive director of Student Academic Services and heard from Rhonda Tracy, who said she was resigning from the board, effective immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

asks for grace in personnel matters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21365,"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-21364","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\/21364","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=21364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77278,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21364\/revisions\/77278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21364"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}