{"id":36290,"date":"2023-01-16T17:05:12","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T00:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-school-board-names-lyndreth-wall-as-newest-member\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T08:30:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:30:17","slug":"montezuma-cortez-school-board-names-lyndreth-wall-as-newest-member","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-school-board-names-lyndreth-wall-as-newest-member\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez school board names Lyndreth Wall as newest member"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lyndreth
Lyndreth Wall, Ute Mountain Ute tribal councilman, attended a meeting with U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CD3) on Saturday at the Ute Mountain Ute Casino to discuss H.R. 8601, a companion bill to another piece of legislation in the U.S. Senate that would protect wildlife and water and land rights in the Dolores River Corridor. (Christian Burney\/Durango Herald)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

In a special meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 3, the Montezuma-Cortez RE-1 School Board voted in Lyndreth Wall as its newest member rafter the resignation of longtime member Stacey Hall.<\/p>\n

The board announced in December they were looking for a replacement, and ended up receiving five applications. Because one applicant lived outside the district, the candidate pool was narrowed down to four \u2013 Lyndreth Wall, Selwyn Whiteskunk, Sarah Collins and Mark Wing.<\/p>\n

The four candidates were asked questions about why they wanted to be on the board and what they hoped to accomplish amongst other questions during the special meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were all really good and really qualified,\u201d Superintendent Tom Burris said.<\/p>\n

After the question-and-answer period, the board discussed which candidates to nominate, noting that each was incredibly talented and would do well on the board.<\/p>\n

They also noted this was one of the hardest decisions they\u2019d had to make in a long time, and that they were happy to see \u201cfour outstanding candidates\u201d apply for the position.<\/p>\n

Wall and Whiteskunk were nominated, and in the end, the board chose Wall with a 5-1 vote. Board Director Cody Wells said Wall\u2019s experience would be a great asset.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been doing this for a long time, and he has a lot of the in\u2019s and out\u2019s as far as representing the Ute (Mountain Ute) Tribe well, and I think he\u2019d step right into the role really easily, really well,\u201d Wells said. \u201cI\u2019ve known him for a long time, and I think he\u2019s really worked on the communication aspect of things \u2026 he\u2019d be a really great liaison.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wall also serves on the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Council and Education Committee in Towaoc.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe can get things straight to the council if there\u2019s an immediate necessity on things like that,\u201d Board President Sheri Noyes pointed out.<\/p>\n

Treasurer Jeanette Heart said Wall has demonstrated his \u201cpassion\u201d on the tribe\u2019s education committee.<\/p>\n

Superintendent Burris had noticed Wall\u2019s interest and participation at school board functions in the past and said that made him stand out by showing he was invested in Montezuma County students.<\/p>\n

Burris said he had met with Wall several times in the past, and he had even shown up to school board meetings to address the board. \u201cHe showed an interest,\u201d Burris said.<\/p>\n

Wall said he decided to run for the board position after hearing Ute Mountain Tribe Representative Stacey Hall had stepped down.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy heart was already in it,\u201d Wall said. \u201cI was just waiting for it to be announced, and when it was, I put a letter of interest to the board to be part of the selection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wall, who has lived in the Montezuma County area for most of his life, said he hopes he can represent all students in the area no matter their background or circumstance, and he hopes to \u201cstand and deliver\u201d on that desire.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to have improvements for all walks of life,\u201d Wall said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t have young folks that are getting educated, we don\u2019t really have a future then. We have to invest in the future of our young folks to get that quality education.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Wall\u2019s goals is for the board to collaborate well together and be an example for other school boards in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really have to prove our relationship all the way around the state of Colorado,\u201d Wall said. \u201cI would like to see our board have other boards look at us and see us lead by example. I would like to see our board influence people to say, \u2018Wow, they\u2019re really kicking butt. They really understand the issues. They tackle it right off.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Wall will be sworn into the board at the next meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 17 at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

serves on Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Council<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,36,29,547],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-36290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-newsletter","tag-ute-mountain-ute-indian-tribe"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36290","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=36290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83291,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36290\/revisions\/83291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36290"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=36290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}