Parent groups stymied by district
Committees push school board and superintendent for dialogue

The length of the school day is a current subject of debate between the Durango High School Parent Advisory Committee, which feels the day is too long for staff and students, and the 9-R Board of Education. However, the committee says it has reached an impasse with 9-R Superintendent Mary Barter and is frustrated at efforts to spark a dialogue on the issue./Photo by Todd Newcomer.

by Adam Howell

"Having sat at quite a few of these meetings, it is evident that healthy, productive disagreements about broad and legitimate educational issues cannot be fairly handled in this setting."

These were the words of Norm Gotlieb, a member of Durango High School's Parent Advisory Committee, at District 9-R's Board of Education meeting on March 8. Gotlieb's sentiment is one that is being expressed more and more frequently by a variety of parent groups with different goals. While the groups want a dialogue with the board, the board says it must first change its governing style - a change that could result in a long-term commitment on its part to making management decisions.

As co-chair of the parental advisory committee, Jeff Schell also addressed the board during the meeting and encountered a resistance familiar to other school groups hoping to better the education of students. Schell's group had concerns with a recent decision by 9-R Superintendent Mary Barter. After the group approached the board about it, School Board members responded that they could not discuss the managerial concern without first making changes to their governing policy, a move the board was not willing to do, partially because it says it wants to avoid micro management.

However, Schell and Gotlieb's concerns are shared by several other parents, staff members and community members in District 9-R. They argue there is no other avenue open to citizens if they are at an impasse with Barter.

Schell has spoken repeatedly about the length of the school day at Durango High School since December of last year. The issue was brought to the surface by comments made by 90 teachers and staff members in a survey done early in 2004, with comments mainly suggesting that class periods are too long for students and teachers.

While some of the advisory committee's issues (improved computers and the attendance policy) have been addressed, their concerns over the length of the day have not. As a result, the committee has asked that the board grant them a means of discussing the topic other than referring them back to the administration and Barter, who is against the idea of decreasing the length of the day.

During the March 8 meeting, Gotlieb expressed frustration with the board over its apparent unwillingness to engage in meaningful dialogue with its constituents.

"It looks like this system is designed so that the superintendent is the sole interpreter of the information the board receives," he said, "and that you have somehow been convinced that this is a legitimate way to run a local school board and district."

After Gotlieb finished his speech and walked away, Board Vice President Joel Jones objected to the accusation. "In the last five days, Norm, I've had through my voice mail and my telephone conversations and my e-mail at least 57 conversations with those constituents you say we don't talk with," Jones said.

Regardless of what the superintendent does, making administrative decisions is outside the realm of the School Board's policy, according to its president Cindi Brevik. Instead, the board must determine if the decisions Barter makes are consistent with its policies. If the superintendent's decisions are found to misinterpret board policies, she said, the board can write tighter, more specific policies, which force the superintendent to take different actions.

"In order to gather the information regarding making a management decision, the board must make a commitment to making management decisions," Brevik said, adding that is something the board is not committed to doing.

However, the board is obligated to give citizens the controlling voice more so than help staff, according to the scholastic interpreter of Policy Governance systems, John Carver.

Carver is credited as being the creator of the Policy Governance model of philosophy, a model by which District 9-R strives to abide by, according to Barter.

At least one board member, Roy Horvath, agrees, saying he interprets policy governance to mean considering community interests first and foremost. "Is the board there for the benefit of the administration or the benefit of the community?" he asked.

Horvath spoke out during a recent meeting over the board giving up its capacity to respond further to the concerns of the Parent Advisory Committee. Horvath later made a motion to refer the issue back to Barter, who in turn said she was unwilling to compromise on the instructional time.

"I think that we have heard enough concern from the parent group, from the teachers, from the students, that this is something that we need to address in a different fashion other than what Dr. Barter has recommended," Horvath said. 4

Members of the DHS Parental Advisory Committee, from left, Cheryle Brandsma, Jeff Schell, Norm Gotlieb, Vickie Gallegos, Deborah Heath and Carol Grenoble, stand on the steps of the 9-R administration building. The group says efforts to engage in a discussion on the length of the school day have fallen on deaf ears./Photo by Todd Newcomer.

"I think that we have heard enough concern from the parent group, from the teachers, from the students, that this is something that we need to address in a different fashion other than what Dr. Barter has recommended," Horvath said. 4

"If we choose to not do anything about this, then basically what we are saying as a board is that we do not function in any fashion as a body that would appeal to our community."

The College Mesa group

Engaging in dialogue with the board is something a parent group from the Skyridge and Hillcrest subdivisions on College Mesa also has found difficult.

According to group member Vicki Gallegos, the recent redistricting of school attendance boundaries has impacted the subdivisions. As a result, students who have been going to Riverview Elementary and would have traditionally fed into Miller Middle School, will now be fed into Escalante - apart from their friends made at Riverview. College Mesa parents are left with the option of open enrolling their students at Miller, if there is enough room. However, open enrollment students currently attending Miller, and siblings of open-enrollment students attending Miller, have priority.

The district said the decision was meant to level out class sizes and accommodate recent housing developments.

Gallegos wrote Barter after a meeting, where she was told that her students would not be grandfathered into Miller, arguing that the change in classmates will take a significant amount of time for her children to adapt to. But Barter countered that for students who must switch to a school outside their original attendance area, the change affects them less than it does the parents, who worry about it a lot.

Nonetheless, what the College Mesa committee wants, much like the high school committee, is a dialogue with the board concerning administrative decisions. But engaging in this kind of dialogue, Brevik says, is outside the board's style of governance.

Ultimately, if groups like the College Mesa parent group aren't pleased with the governing process, they can change it by electing board members with similar viewpoints, said board member Chris Paulson. Incidentally, in November 2003, when four board seats were up for re-election, none of them were contested, she said.

Escalante's principal search committee

The issue of dialogue also rose to the surface recently when the board voted to uphold the administration's choice of a new principal for Escalante Middle School. Barter's selection of Bruce Hankins, the principal at North Valley Middle School in Weld County, over Escalante's Assistant Principal Amy Kendziorski, created unrest. The decision ran counter to the recommendation of a search committee of parents and teachers, who recommended Kendziorski.

Search committee member Deborah Heath argued that the efforts of the committee were taken for granted when their recommendation was disregarded. She added that the district chose not to accept the committee's preference, proceeding with its decision without further discussion.

"I feel that it would have been more responsible and courteous to have personally informed the committee members of the outcome," Heath said.

After selecting the candidate and learning of the upset it caused with the search committee, Barter said she revisited the process with second interviews of candidates, prior to the board's last meeting, where it approved her decision. Yet in the end, Hankins was chosen because he had more experience, Barter said.

Nevertheless, at the meeting, Heath asked the district to invest more consideration into its final choice for principal. She also asked the district to seek further dialogue with the search committee prior to making a final decision. But further dialogue did not happen, as the board voted 4-2 to uphold the cabinet's decision.

"The district needs to examine carefully the message given to staff regarding value and opportunities available to them for advancement within the district," Heath said. "Not only does this process silence parents and risk losing their input to the district, it also erodes their support for the district overall."

Alas, groups like the Parent Advisory Committee are continuing to request that the board grant them the opportunity to discuss their issues with them. And they will continue to press their case at the board's next public meeting, April 12.