{"id":34183,"date":"2023-04-15T01:27:55","date_gmt":"2023-04-15T07:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-district-accountability-committee-seeks-parents-opinion\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:16:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:16:32","slug":"cortez-district-accountability-committee-seeks-parents-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-district-accountability-committee-seeks-parents-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez district accountability committee seeks parents\u2019 opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sam
Sam Green\/The Journal<br><br>The Montezuma-Cortez School District budget is expected to rise next school year, but district officials say it still won\u2019t be enough to address staff salaries, transportation and other district needs.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A survey was sent to parents of students in the Montezuma-Cortez school district on Thursday to help understand the wants and needs of parents who have children enrolled in local schools.<\/p>\n

The survey was created by members of the county\u2019s district accountability committee, which is made up of 11 members.<\/p>\n

Co-chairs Laura DeWitt and Monica Plewe spoke with the Journal about the survey and what the committee hopes to accomplish.<\/p>\n

DeWitt has a child attending Kemper Elementary, while Plewe has had multiple children go through the local school system and has been involved in PTA and school and district accountability committees for more than two decades. Her youngest child attends Cortez Middle School.<\/p>\n

In order to create the survey, DeWitt and Plewe met with members of the community to come up with a first draft. After a workable first draft was created, it was presented to DAC.<\/p>\n

\u201cDAC members worked hard to get through differences and come up with a consensus on the final product,\u201c DeWitt said.<\/p>\n

DeWitt and Plewe hope parents\u2019 participation in the survey will help guide the committee as it tries to address issues within district schools.<\/p>\n

District accountability committees are made up of parents, school employees and members of the community who want to help improve the state of local schools.<\/p>\n

The committees pay attention to data coming out about schools, give feedback to district administrators and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve focused mainly on creating bylaws to give structure to how we do our work, and responding to the Board of Education\u2019s request for the DAC to give input on the family engagement policy,\u201d DeWitt said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes the schools need the information from the parents to do their jobs better. And then the parents need the information from the schools to help their kids do better. And I think it needs to feel more like a collaboration and less like a conflict,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

DeWitt noted that she hopes parents will take the survey without feeling like there are politics behind the survey or the decisions of the committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not about politics,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s about figuring out how to do better for the kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeWitt, who is an eye doctor, said she became involved in the committee after becoming concerned about the academics and low test scores in the school that her child attends.<\/p>\n

She became excited when she learned about district and school accountability committees and wanted to be involved to help make a difference.<\/p>\n

The committee wants to get more parents involved in the district and in their children\u2019s education, discussing how to make local education better for everyone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really want to talk to families about things like, what are the barriers to attendance? How can we come up with solutions to do things better?\u201d DeWitt said.<\/p>\n

The committee is small right now, only four parent members, and DeWitt said they felt like they couldn\u2019t properly advise district administrators on issues without more input from other parents, which led to the decision to create the survey.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were like the four of us cannot really advise the district on how they should engage with families,\u201d DeWitt said. \u201cWe\u2019re just too limited.\u201d<\/p>\n

In total, the committee has 11 members. Four parents, two teachers, two administrators, a Native American representative and 2 business owners are currently part of the committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur meetings have been well attended by other community members and parents (who are not official members), and everyone has contributed to our work. The board has directed us to add 2 more slots for community members, and we are asking the board (in our by-laws) to allow us to expand official membership to any parent who is able to meet attendance requirements, and a representative from each school\u2019s accountability committee (SAC) should they choose to send one,\u201c DeWitt said.<\/p>\n

Plewe added that they believe the committee will allow parents to feel like their voices are being heard, when in the past high turnover has made parents feel like they have to start over with their progress when new administration is hired.<\/p>\n

The committee has submitted their bylaws to the school board for approval, but have not heard from the board on the status of the committee\u2019s bylaws. Plewe noted that once those are approved, they will be able to gain momentum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the biggest kicker is that there\u2019s a new feeling about the accountability committee being exclusive. They\u2019ve never been exclusive, but it\u2019s been very limited,\u201d Plewe said. \u201cHow can you ask people to be accountable for something when you\u2019re not even hearing more parents voices? Once the bylaws are passed, they\u2019re going to allow anybody that attends multiple times to have a say in a vote. So if they\u2019ll approve those, we can add more and more voices. We\u2019re trying to push that into the schools so that their school accountability committee is where change happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because some parents have expressed their concerns or suspicions about the survey to the committee, DeWitt said they made the survey anonymous and the questions simple to save time for participants.<\/p>\n

Some survey questions ask whether parents think their child\u2019s school is preparing them for the next grade level or next school, if parents feel their child is safe, whether parents are notified right away if an incident occurs, which tools work the best for communicating with parents, what the district is doing well and what the district isn\u2019t doing well.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo hopefully from now on we\u2019ll be able to advise the school district on updating their policy and give them real things they can do. The idea is to have families and schools working together to have better outcomes for the kids,\u201d DeWitt said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so excited,\u201d Plewe added. \u201cIt feels like we\u2019re making some progress for families to get back into schools to help their kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

The committee believes growing and strengthening parental involvement in the district is key to improving local schools, so they are hoping for more parents to become involved, starting with the survey.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, May 4, the committee is holding a dinner for parents and the community to discuss the results of the survey, something Plewe said the committee is looking forward to.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistorically, that has not happened,\u201d Plewe said.\u201d We fill out a lot of surveys, and we never hear back. We\u2019re hoping to change that. We want people to come out and see what people said (on the survey).\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, once the committee receives a thumbs-up from the district, the information gathered from the survey will be provided to all in the community who wish to know what the results were.<\/p>\n

At the dinner, they are also hoping to host Darcy Hutchins, director of Family Partnerships at Colorado Department of Education, who can go through the \u201cnuts and bolts\u201d of how to get the accountability committee up and running most efficiently as well as how parents can make a difference in their children\u2019s school.<\/p>\n

The meeting on May 4 will also include food and activities for kids in attendance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is for anyone in the community who wants to come in and talk about and learn how to engage in school, and Darcy will do something about basic educating and getting information out there about how school accountability committees work. As well as how people can get involved,\u201d DeWitt said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have any illusions that this is going to solve everything right away, but hopefully this is a good first step to get people talking about it,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

District Accountability Committee hopes for increased parental involvement and input in education<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,216,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-34183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","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\/34183","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=34183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82504,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34183\/revisions\/82504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34183"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=34183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}