After a school-board meeting at which more than a half-dozen anonymous letters were read aloud, Montezuma-Cortez School District Re-1 Superintendent Tom Burris says the board may need to consider adopting a policy about such letters.
Burris told KSJD he believes, “If you can’t stand up there and say it, we don’t need to hear it.” He plans to ask the board to consider adopting a policy against the reading of anonymous letters.
“I’ve had people read letters for other people and they list them,” he said, “but I’ve never had the anonymous letters like this time.”
At the July 15 meeting, a dozen people spoke during the public-comments period. A number said they were reading letters from district employees who wanted to remain anonymous because of fear of retaliation by the administration.
Many of the comments were critical of the nonrenewal of a contract next year for longtime Kemper Elementary School teacher Nancy Shaw, who was widely praised by the speakers. Shaw has reportedly worked for the district for more than 30 years.
Susan Fryhover, who was giving her own views rather than reading a letter, said, “Mrs. Shaw is a teacher you can count on – reliable, hardworking, and deeply committed to the success of every student she teaches. . . . She represents the very best of what education has to offer.”
Fryhover said Shaw was an “exceptional mentor” when Fryhover resumed her teaching career at Kemper.
Tess Montaño Forth said both of her daughters were taught by Shaw and she was “an incredibly involved teacher.”
Montaño Forth said she is also concerned about a general exodus of teachers from the district. “I see people retiring, leaving the community, or simply just not having contracts renewed,” she said, adding, “We have to do anything we can to keep these wonderful resources. We need to do better by our teachers. It’s not enough to have yard signs and T-shirts and stickers.”
Those were comments given personally, but many other comments were from anonymous letters.
Torrey Palmer said she was reading pieces written by two current district employees.
One said, “I am writing on behalf of my colleague and friend Nancy Shaw, whose nonrenewal has left many of us disheartened and concerned. . . “ The letter said Shaw is “someone who has given decades of her life to educating and nurturing children” and that parents regularly request her by name.
The other letter Palmer read praised Shaw for her “unparalleled dedication and passion” and said she is “renowned for her ability to inspire and motivate.”
Nicci Crowley read another letter from an employee, who wrote that he or she was not speaking out personally “because I am a district employee and to do so would be career suicide. Those employees who have spoken out in any way have been punished and reassigned, moved to other positions in the district without warning.”
Then speaking for herself, Crowley said that Montezuma-Cortez High School has lost 167 years’ worth of experience by losing veteran educators. She asked whether more-experienced teachers are being removed because their salaries are higher than those of new hires.
“Is this where we’re going to save money, by hiring people with little to no experience?” Crowley asked.
M.B. McAfee also read an anonymous letter with similar views. Then she said, “I really hope the administrators here and you folks there are seriously offended that teachers can’t come and talk to you themselves for fears their jobs will be cut – slashed.”
Saying the responsibility rests on Burris, McAfee said, “It’s a deplorable situation when employees can’t speak out publicly to their employers.”
However, Sherri Wright, a former school-board member who is now on the State Board of Education, spoke in disagreement.
Wright said that while Shaw had taught her two granddaughters and did an excellent job, Wright doesn’t know what’s going on behind the scenes because board members have knowledge the public does not.
“Across the nation, teachers are leaving,” Wright said. “It’s not because of leadership, it’s because of finding other things to do. It’s money, a lot of it is money, remember that.”
In response to the many comments about Shaw, school-board president Sheri Noyes said board members are indeed privy to information average citizens don’t have. She said they often can’t disclose it because it’s protected as a personnel matter or for other reasons.
“That gets frustrating when we aren’t able to tell you,” Noyes said.
“It’s not that we don’t want to tell you exactly what we’re doing, it’s that we can’t sometimes. We’d appreciate a little bit of grace on some of that sometimes. It’s hard being up here on a board doing things and wishing you could shout it from the rooftops.”
Noyes also said, “Anybody that knows me knows that I have been for the kids since day one. . . . I do not lose sleep at night because I know at the end of the day, I know what’s most important.”
Board member Mike Lynch thanked the people who had come to the microphone to speak and urged them to continue doing that.
He said he wanted to echo what Noyes had said, that it would be easier on the board if they could be transparent about everything, but they have to follow the law.
Regarding Shaw, he said, “I’m going to miss having a teacher of Mrs. Shaw’s abilities in our district but I know a little bit more than what has been made public and it looks like there’s nothing that can be done no matter how much the board would like something to be done.”
Burris then urged the audience to read state statutes about “return to work” employees.
KSJD could not reach Shaw for comment.
In an interview with KSJD, Burris said he is a “return to work” employee, meaning he came back to work after retiring. He is being paid a salary while still collecting retirement paychecks from PERA, the state fund that provides retirement income to employees in state government and education.
He said the district has several “return to work” employees. “Thank God for them,” he said. “We need them.”
There are limits to how many hours or days a person who comes back after retirement can work without having their salary penalized. They are also not supposed to work more than six consecutive years after leaving their original retirement.
Burris told KSJD it was not true that the district is getting rid of experienced teachers and hiring young ones in order to save money.
The difference in what a “young, out-of-college” teacher and a longtime veteran earns is about $35,000 a year, he said, but the district needs to make up a $1.8 million shortfall that resulted from increasing teacher salaries to get them to a base more in line with the state average.
“So $35,000 doesn’t even get you started [in making that up],” he said.
Burris said the administration doesn’t retaliate against people who speak out, and he said no one is able to give examples of that happening.
“Point to somebody that’s happened to,” he said. “They say, ‘We’re scared of retaliation’ – well, give me one person’s name. People who speak have First Amendment rights.”
The district has taken some personnel actions that have been questioned, he said, but they were “based on good cause and have actually stood up in court.”
