{"id":72988,"date":"2017-01-18T20:51:33","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T03:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-school-board-talks-strategic-plan-mill-levy\/"},"modified":"2017-01-19T03:51:33","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T03:51:33","slug":"cortez-school-board-talks-strategic-plan-mill-levy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-school-board-talks-strategic-plan-mill-levy\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez school board talks strategic plan, mill levy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=93ac270e-460a-4e89-93f0-88c797681040&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1285\" alt=\"The old Montezuma-Cortez High School on Seventh Street will be demolished this spring, and school officials are looking toward other spending projects.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">The old Montezuma-Cortez High School on Seventh Street will be demolished this spring, and school officials are looking toward other spending projects.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>It\u2019s been about five years since the idea to build a new Montezuma-Cortez High School was first proposed, and now the Re-1 district is preparing to demolish the old high school building this spring.<\/p>\n<p>With that major project almost behind them, school board members talked about the next era for the district at Tuesday\u2019s board meeting. They discussed creating a three-year strategic plan, as well as pursuing a mill levy override this year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is agreement among the board that this is something we need to do and get started right away,\u201d board president Jack Schuenemeyer said of the strategic plan.<\/p>\n<p>Recruiting and retaining teachers has been a struggle for the district, in part because of low salaries, Schuenemeyer said. One main reason for a potential mill levy would be to boost salaries for teachers, he said.<\/p>\n<p>State voters passed a law in November\u2019s election that will require the minimum wage to be raised to $12 per hour by 2020. That will put more financial strain on the district as staff salaries are gradually raised to comply with that law, assistant superintendent Dan Porter said.<\/p>\n<p>The district also needs upgrades to its bus fleet, building facilities and technology resources, Schuenemeyer said. A strategic plan would organize those needs to plan for the future, and a mill levy override would assist the district with finances.<\/p>\n<p>Superintendent Lori Haukeness said she would like to have a computer for every student, but right now no school in the district has enough for all its students.<\/p>\n<p>Board member Sherri Wright said part of the reason student test scores have been low is because they don\u2019t have as much access to technology as other school districts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not a level playing field,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>In order to be successful, a mill levy effort would need lots of support from district personnel and community members, Wright said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe mill levy and strategic plan has to go hand in hand,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>members, school officials discuss salaries, bus upgrades, computers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-72988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72988","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=72988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72988"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=72988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}