{"id":44501,"date":"2021-09-24T02:31:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-24T08:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-school-board-passes-resolution-opposing-critical-race-theory\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:19:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:19:40","slug":"montezuma-cortez-school-board-passes-resolution-opposing-critical-race-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-school-board-passes-resolution-opposing-critical-race-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez school board passes resolution opposing critical race theory"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Montezuma-Cortez Board of Education held its monthly meeting Tuesday, and discussed topics including critical race theory, COVID-19, teacher pay and staffing.<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Montezuma-Cortez School District RE-1 Board of Education passed a motion to approve a \u201cResolution Opposing Principles of Critical Race Theory\u201d document at its September meeting on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The board established a committee to comb through school curriculum and remove \u201cembedded\u201d traces of critical race theory.<\/p>\n

John Schuenemeyer was the only board member to vote against the motion, although Chris Flaherty, who was not in attendance, on Thursday told The Journal<\/em> he disagreed with the decision as well. Flaherty and Schuenemeyer announced earlier Thursday that they had resigned from their board positions.<\/p>\n

Schuenemeyer and Flaherty said they have talked individually with district teachers about critical race theory.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey perceive it as an effort to remove anything in teaching materials that portrays Indigenous people and other non-Caucasians in a favorable light,\u201d Schuenemeyer said.<\/p>\n

From what he\u2019s gathered from teachers, Flaherty said that the current Wit and Wisdom curriculum is \u201cjust a guideline \u2014 it\u2019s not, \u2018You must read this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost 50% of our kids in this district are non-white \u2014 are you telling them that race doesn\u2019t matter?\u201d Schuenemeyer said at the meeting.<\/p>\n

He said he was concerned that the motion would eliminate diversity in schools, and that it was a waste of time and money.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not trying to get rid of any culture, diversity, anything like that \u2013 it is completely just the racism part,\u201d said board member Sheri Noyes. \u201cNobody should apologize for anything, nobody should blame anybody for anything that happened eons ago, years ago \u2013 it shouldn\u2019t still be in our school today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Board member Sherri Wright said that the motion wouldn\u2019t erase history from school curriculum.<\/p>\n

She said she met with the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, which requested the board take out the clause, \u201cNeither schools nor instructors shall assign individuals or groups of students to participate in class or complete assignments based on their racial identity,\u201d because the tribe felt it limited their students to identify and express their culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still learn the bad \u2014 you just don\u2019t blame people for it. You just say, \u2018We\u2019re going to learn from that so that we will not do it again,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Forrest Kohere, an eighth grade language arts teacher at Montezuma-Cortez Middle School, addressed the board earlier in the meeting Tuesday about critical race theory.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe amount of work it takes to internalize and teach a new curriculum should not be underestimated,\u201d he said. \u201cTo come back to school in the fall and find the board putting together a committee to reopen and possibly remove our curriculum was devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vetting possible curriculum, learning new curriculum and preparing to teach it involved many hours of work over the summer \u2014 many of them unpaid, he said. He didn\u2019t want to start over with a new curriculum.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a year when we should have many other priorities taking center stage,\u201d he said, \u201cour ELA teachers have had to volunteer their time to explain again the procedures followed for adopting curriculum, the educational science behind the curriculum and the national ratings for the curriculum \u2013 all of which was information that was provided in the detailed report to the board in May and resulted in the curriculum being passed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kohere proposed a short-term solution: have the board acknowledge that the curriculum was adopted following policy, and requesting that the board refrain from stating the curriculum contained critical race theory before officially defining it.<\/p>\n

Wright later read a definition on the theory from Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw, a civil rights and critical race theory scholar and law professor at Columbia Law School and the University of California, Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

An excerpt from what Wright shared, which Crenshaw said to Time <\/em> magazine in an email, states, \u201cIt\u2019s an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what\u2019s in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the future, staff would be happy to continue examining the curriculum using the board definition of critical race theory, Kohere said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe suggest that the curriculum committee created to discuss the presence of CRT be reorganized to actually reflect the demographics of our school community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

If the new committee found critical race theory in the sixth through eighth grade curriculum, staff would be willing to work on removing it, he said.<\/p>\n

In an excerpt of his resignation letter, Schuenemeyer wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn reality, CRT is a highly complex subject taught at the graduate level in a university. The resolution declaring opposition to Critical Race Theory approved by a majority of the Board on Sept. 21, 2021 did not: 1) contain a definition of Critical Race Theory, 2) describe who is qualified to make these judgments, 3) state how teachers will participate or 4) describe an appeal process. By approving this resolution, the Board has ignored the fact that nearly 50% of our students are non-white.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teacher pay and staff shortage<\/div>\n

Tuesday, the Montezuma-Cortez School District RE-1 Board of Education passed a motion to increase pay for teachers who cover other classes during districtwide staffing shortages, as well as for paraprofessionals who work in exceptional student services.<\/p>\n

The increased wages will date to Sept. 1.<\/p>\n

Current staff shortages correlate with teacher pay, said RE-1 Director of Human Resources Cynthia Eldredge at the monthly meeting.<\/p>\n

She made pay recommendations to the board to address the issues \u2014 along with Director of Finance Kyle Archibeque \u2014 which were passed.<\/p>\n

The district is critically short of ESS paraprofessionals, she said, and the board voted to make their starting hourly rate $14.50 instead of $13.50.<\/p>\n

She also recommended increasing teacher-for-teacher substitute salaries. In the secondary schools, if a teacher fills in for an absent teacher, they are paid $13.33 an hour. For activities outside of regularly scheduled work hours, like tutoring, teachers receive an hourly rate of $30.48, she said. She wanted this rate to apply to teacher-for-teacher subbing.<\/p>\n

Increasing teacher pay has been an ongoing board discussion. Teachers currently start at a salary of about $32,000, Director of Finance Kyle Archibeque told The Journal <\/em> Sept. 7.<\/p>\n

LGBTQ+ club at middle school<\/div>\n

Some community members addressed the board about a student-led, LGBTQ+ lunchtime club that meets once a week, known as the Rainbow Club.<\/p>\n

Under the first reading section on the board\u2019s agenda was a proposal to amend district policy JJA-2<\/a> concerning student organizations, redlining the part that states: \u201cLunch period is considered \u2018noninstructional time.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is their one time a week where they just get together at lunch and support each other,\u201d said Flaherty Thursday after his resignation.<\/p>\n

Janet Hough supports the club.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019Every student. Every Day.\u2019 includes LGBTQIA+ students and allies. The students have the right to start, access and participate in a supportive club that helps them feel less alone,\u201d she said during the public comment section.<\/p>\n

Tiffany Ghere said the club needed to \u201cbe gone\u201d and be conducted after school hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cA child who has not had a period, not had a first kiss, maybe does not need to be taught about their sexual identity,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat a better way to confuse an already confusing time in our children\u2019s life,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Student discipline<\/div>\n

\u201cThis week, several discipline issues have come across my desk so I\u2019m trying to deal aggressively with those and handle them,\u201d said Assistant Superintendent Lis Richard. \u201cI know how frustrating it is as a principal not to have the attention you need and the action that you need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another teacher from M-CMS addressed this issue with the board, saying some students engage in behaviors like yelling profanities at teachers and throwing chairs.<\/p>\n

Currently, the middle school has 543 enrolled students.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vast majority of these students are wonderful and make our school community a pleasant place to be,\u201d he said. \u201cHowever, we also serve a number of students who have incredibly high levels of behavioral issues that take an immense amount of time and energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The school has seen 40% of it\u2019s referrals come from repeated behaviors in the same students, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of these students have needs that we simply do not have the resources to serve,\u201d he said. \u201cMany of these student behaviors seem to have protection to such a degree that any behavior \u2014 no matter how detrimental to the learning environment it may be \u2014 is not allowed to be consequenced in a way consistent with our student handbook or Colorado state law.\u201d<\/p>\n

COVID-19 update<\/strong><\/div>\n

The Montezuma-Cortez School District RE-1 issued a letter stating that as of Wednesday, the district had seen the highest number of COVID-19 cases so far this school year.<\/p>\n

The district also reported that for the first time, students were infecting other students.<\/p>\n

A letter Thursday from the middle school said the Montezuma County Health Department identified an outbreak in one of the sixth grade classrooms, and said there were nine positive cases \u2014 five in the past two days. The students have been quarantined since Friday, it said.<\/p>\n

Since the beginning of the school year, there have been 30 total cases of COVID-19 in the district, Richard said Tuesday at the board meeting.<\/p>\n

As of Tuesday night, five students and three staff were virus-positive. No staff had tested positive in the past two weeks of school until Tuesday evening, she said.<\/p>\n

Seventy-four students are quarantined, Richard added.<\/p>\n

Superintendent Risha VanderWey has not responded to requests for comment on current updated district case numbers.<\/p>\n

This article was updated Sept. 28 to add details on the teacher pay plan.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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