After an executive session that lasted nearly five hours, the Montezuma-Cortez Re-1 School Board in a special meeting Tuesday night came up with a list of three finalists for district superintendent.
They are the district’s current assistant superintendent, Eddie Ramirez; Karen Sanchez-Griego, the retired former superintendent of the Cuba Independent School District in New Mexico; and Michael McFalls, who was dismissed as superintendent in Grand County, Utah, last month.
McFalls’ “forced resignation” was passed by the Grand County School Board 5-0 as part of its consent agenda on Sept. 10, according to reporting in the Times-Independent and Moab Sun News.
The dismissal was apparently fairly controversial, with a number of people speaking in favor of McFalls, who had been in the job just over a year and who denied he had done anything “illegal, immoral, or unethical.”
One of the three finalists is to replace current Re-1 superintendent Tom Burris, who is retiring for the third time in his career. He has said, however, that if the board can’t find the right person, he will continue to serve out the remainder of his contact, which ends in June.
The board has been on an aggressively speedy path to choose a new superintendent since Burris announced his retirement on Sept. 16. They want to choose a new person before November’s election, in which eleven people are running for five open seats and there could possibly be a very different board chosen.
The vote for naming the three finalists passed 4-3, with Paul Beckler, Jason Hall, and Sheri Noyes voting no. None of them are running for re-election. Beckler opted out, Hall was appointed just recently, and Noyes is term-limited
An audience of eight was present when the board exited its executive session, which began at 6:05 p.m., at 10:45. Some in the audience questioned why the purpose of the executive session was only stated as “consideration of documents protected by the mandatory nondisclosure provisions of the Open Records Act, specifically non-finalist application materials for the position of superintendent” under Colorado Revised Statutes 24-6-402(4)(g).
That led people to believe the session might not last so long, but it was later revealed that the session included interviews with candidates and then deliberations on those candidates.
After passing the motion naming the finalists, the board also scheduled a community engagement meeting at which the public can meet the finalists. It was set for Monday, Oct. 13, at 5:30 p.m., in the boardroom at 400 N. Elm St. in Cortez. That conflicts with an already-scheduled forum for board candidates that was set for the same night at 6 p.m. at the Cortez Chamber of Commerce, 20 W. Main St., Cortez.
Another forum for board candidates, organized by the League of Women Voters, has been scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 16, at 6 p.m. at the Montezuma County Annex, 107 N. Chestnut St., Cortez.
