{"id":95905,"date":"2019-01-28T17:01:10","date_gmt":"2019-01-29T00:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-school-district-9-r-board-backs-snowberger-in-statement\/"},"modified":"2019-01-28T17:01:10","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T00:01:10","slug":"durango-school-district-9-r-board-backs-snowberger-in-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-school-district-9-r-board-backs-snowberger-in-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"Durango School District 9-R board backs Snowberger in statement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Durango School District 9-R Board of Education issued a statement Friday backing Superintendent Dan Snowberger and offering details about why they allowed a one-year extension of the superintendent\u2019s contract to proceed.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Durango School District 9-R Board of Education members issued a statement backing Superintendent Dan Snowberger after granting an automatic, one-year extension allowing his contract to proceed.<\/p>\n

\u201cNotably, Dan Snowberger has earned the trust of his principals across the district\u2019s 12 schools as well as the respect and support of many thoughtful leaders in our town, with his leadership being appreciated for how he has cultivated leaders and given principals autonomy to shape their schools,\u201d board members said in the statement.<\/p>\n

\"Snowberger\"
Snowberger<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The extension of the contract, which will carry Snowberger through the 2020-21 academic year, comes after Snowberger\u2019s contract was renewed in September and he was granted a 2 percent raise, bringing his annual salary to $169,320.<\/p>\n

In the statement the board members released Friday, they said: \u201c\u2026 each member of the board believes strongly that we have the right superintendent for the job to: support the district\u2019s 5,000 students; hire and retain the best staff and teachers; and use the community and state-entrusted funds as wisely as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The contract extension caps a tumultuous few months in Snowberger\u2019s tenure at the school district.<\/p>\n

\"Stubbs\"
Stubbs<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Late last month, School Board President Nancy Stubbs admonished Snowberger for using district email to air his \u201cpersonal agenda\u201d<\/a> in response to media stories about him. In an email Snowberger sent to 9-R staff on Dec. 21, he accused The Durango Herald<\/em> of publishing a \u201cdefamatory document without the opportunity for me to present facts.\u201d He said he had \u201cpersonally engaged an attorney to address the libel and defamation of character that some individuals in our community felt appropriate.\u201dSpecifically, Snowberger takes issue with a white paper released by a group of residents, employees and former employees in which it called for the superintendent to be fired after it said it found numerous alleged inaccuracies in Snowberger\u2019s r\u00e9sum\u00e9s and applications for past jobs and 9-R. The group released an unsigned, 46-page white paper, \u201cMisleading Leadership?: A Close Examination of Dan Snowberger\u2019s Educational Career Records,\u201d<\/a> claiming he misrepresented and provided inaccurate information about his career in education. Snowberger said most allegations made in the white paper issued by the Durango 9-R Central Office Accountability<\/a> group are inaccurate.<\/p>\n

Previous to the admonishment about using his district email to discuss suing the Herald<\/em>, Snowberger and a parent of 2018 Riverview Elementary School student clashed over allegations his son was sexually assaulted in May 2018 by a classmate. The father claims Snowberger and 9-R mishandled the investigation and compromised his son\u2019s identity and the father has filed two complaints concerning the alleged sexual assault with the U.S. Department of Education\u2019s Office of Civil Rights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Snowberger also initially denied an incident Oct. 19 at Needham Elementary School involving a 9-R administrator took place<\/a>. He eventually acknowledged a 911 call that was made about the incident and said he was trying to protect the employee\u2019s privacy, who he said was at the school as a parent, not an administrator.<\/p>\n

On Dec. 5, Snowberger issued an apology letter on 9-R\u2019s website about his handling of the 911 incident.<\/p>\n

parmijo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

School board statement (PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Release comes after 1-year contract extension for superintendent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":95906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5794,5735],"tags":[4835,1086,4259],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-95905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-dan-snowberger","tag-durango-school-district-9-r","tag-newsletter-sign-up"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95905","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=95905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95905"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=95905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}