{"id":22154,"date":"2025-05-21T19:54:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T19:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-school-board-disagrees-about-staff-non-renewals\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:11:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:11:41","slug":"mancos-school-board-disagrees-about-staff-non-renewals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-school-board-disagrees-about-staff-non-renewals\/","title":{"rendered":"Mancos school board disagrees about staff non-renewals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Mancos school board discussed a variety of topics at their Monday night meeting. (Screen capture via YouTube)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Mancos RE-6 Board of Education on Monday revisited a discussion about how it handled recent decisions about renewing staff contracts.<\/p>\n

The meeting began as three individuals addressed the board, expressing concerns about \u201clack of communication and transparency,\u201d \u201cnon-consistent procedures\u201d and \u201cfading\u201d support system for staff.<\/p>\n

The District Accountability Committee\u2019 addressed \u201cdismal\u201d pay for teachers and staff, and urged the board to move forward with the mill levy override.<\/p>\n

Superintendent Todd Cordrey announced that district had three \u201cstrong\u201d applicants for the position of elementary school principal, two of them internal candidates. Applications are open until May 26, but Interviews are expected to commence on May 29.<\/p>\n

Among action items, the board entered a heated discussion surrounding whether to approve the nonrenewal of some staff for the 2025-26 school year, something that had been brought up during citizen comments in their April meeting.<\/p>\n

During that meeting, parents, staff and students met to address the board regarding the contract renewals of Meagan Higinbotham and Jason Coullier, who work as a seventh\/eighth grade English teacher and mechanic\/bus driver, respectively.<\/p>\n

After the May meeting, Superintendent Todd Cordrey and board President Emily Hutcheson-Brown cleared up some to the confusion surrounding Higinbotham\u2019s and Coullier\u2019s contract renewals.<\/p>\n

\u201cMegan and Jason will have a position with the school district next year,\u201d Cordrey said. \u201cIt\u2019s just that their positions may be different from their current position.\u201d<\/p>\n

During this month\u2019s meeting, board members Rachel McWhirter and Victor Figueroa vehemently expressed their reservations, saying they didn\u2019t believe that proper processes were followed when it came to the non-renewals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have failed them,\u201d McWhirter said of the staff.<\/p>\n

Board President Emily Hutcheson-Brown said it was not the board\u2019s place to get into work that belongs to Cordrey and his staff, to which Figueroa countered by saying the board should get involved if processes were done incorrectly and \u201cunethically.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not treat our staff, teachers as if they are disposable,\u201d Figueroa said. \u201cIt is unethical and disrespectful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cordrey spoke next, adding his insight into the nonrenewal process.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo assert that someone is acting without integrity is really poor form and downright disgusting,\u201d Cordrey said. \u201cI don\u2019t appreciate that. I do my work with integrity, and this employee, we found her an equally paying job better suited to her needs. This a shame, and I\u2019m sorry for all the heartache around it, but we have a responsibility to teachers and a responsibility to students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cordrey added that it was imperative to put a licensed teacher in the position.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving a non-licensed person in the classroom versus a licensed person who\u2019s gone through teacher training and professional teacher conduct training support, is who we want in our classrooms,\u201d Cordrey said. \u201cIt\u2019s what our students deserve, and it\u2019s what the parents expect. And that is what we\u2019re going to have for next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the meeting, Cordrey told with The<\/em> Journal<\/em> about the policies referenced during the meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe school district has conflicting policies due to its unique Innovative status approval with the state, which exempts it from cumbersome, bureaucratic state statutes regarding licensed teacher protocols,\u201d Cordrey said. \u201cInnovative Status allows MSD to have non-licensed staff in the classroom for up to three years. In this case, the timeline expired without state licensure in place.\u00a0As a result, the staff was reassigned to a nonacademic position at the same compensation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cordrey noted that this is consistent with the district\u2019s \u201cvalues\u201d of supporting staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, to attract and retain high-quality staff, the school district has helped 10 staff members over the last six years by providing financial support for either a master\u2019s degree or an alternative teacher\u2019s license through the PEBC (Public Education and Business Coalition) program,\u201d Cordrey said.<\/p>\n

After more back and forth between the board members, Hutcheson-Brown said it was undermining Cordrey to discuss this in public, rather than approaching Cordrey about the issue. Figueroa said he had previously spoke about the problem with Cordrey.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not our place to say where an employee does or doesn\u2019t belong,\u201d Hutcheson-Brown said of the board\u2019s role.<\/p>\n

The vote of the staff\u2019s nonrenewal was approved for the 2025-26 school year, with Hutcheson-Brown, Craig Benally and Tim Hunter voting in favor and McWhirter and Figueroa voting against.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen policies conflict, managing the school district becomes more difficult. As a result, I am glad to see the Board of Education dedicating substantial time to policy development this summer,\u201d Cordrey said. \u201cThis will eliminate the conflict that upsets the board and causes confusion in the district.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

was split on whether or not to approve the non-renewals<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[155,28,83,392,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-mancos","tag-mancos-school-district-re-6","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22154","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=22154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77596,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22154\/revisions\/77596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22154"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}