Typically, when school districts win big things – in addition to press releases, ceremonies and mahogany placards – the distinction comes with something solid, like money, new swimming pools or a visit from Oprah.
But for months, Durango School District 9-R has been celebrating an altogether less flashy accolade.
In September, the National Education Association named Durango School District one of five districts across the country to join its Foundation Institute for Innovation in Teaching and Learning.
The prize singles out Durango for its unusually productive relationship with the local teachers’ union, the Durango Education Association.
The prize doesn’t come with oodles of money, said Superintendent Daniel Snowberger.
Instead, it comes with extensive teacher training from NEA specialists.
But Snowberger said it was huge for the district, likening it to the Oscars or journalistic prizes, like the Pulitzer.
“It’s really a fabulous thing, but no one knows about it. I don’t know why you haven’t reported on it,” he said.
Julie Popp, spokeswoman for the district, echoed him, saying to be just one of five districts in America singled out, for its collegial relationship with the Durango Education Association, was an enormous achievement.
Linda Barker, director of teaching and learning for the Colorado Education Association, said she’s worked closely with Durango School District for more than two years.
She said while schools in Durango, like schools throughout the state, are faced with ever-tightening purse strings, teachers have fewer and fewer financial resources to prepare for new state-mandated measures of student performance.
In these circumstances, it would be too easy for frustrated and cash-strapped district to brawl with a demoralized teachers’ union.
Yet, Barker said, in Durango, district-union relations are unique in both parties’ continued exhibition of good faith, positive thinking and open dialogue.
“What I see in Durango, it’s strength, is that they have all the voices in the process,” she said.
“It’s a very collaborative district that includes everyone, from school board members to teachers to support personnel.”
The laurels for Durango come at a time of identity crisis for many teachers’ unions. Even during the Clinton years, teachers unions enjoyed the same political status as nurses, doctors, firefighters and veterans – a politically untouchable class of employee that engendered fuzzy feelings in the electorate and exultant, if robotic, praise from politicians in both parties.
Those days are long gone. Since the recession, teachers’ unions across the country have weathered bitter, sometimes unfair, accusations that they defend their own ranks at the expense of students’ well-being – and, more to the point – their often generous pensions at the expense of taxpayers.
In recent years, even The New York Times editorial page – historically a friendly space for teachers’ interests, has denounced the city’s “rubber rooms,” where the powerful NYC teachers’ union has plopped discredited teachers – sometimes for years – while teachers await arbitrations.
In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie dedicated much of his first term to apoplectic diatribes that cast teachers’ unions as lazy bastions of incompetence, while in Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, a Democrat, tussled with the teachers’ unions in his first months on the job.
Unlike in New Jersey, where editorial writers agree Christie’s rhetoric did the political equivalent of beating the unions into a bloody pulp, when Chicago’s Emanuel demanded longer school days and tougher teacher evaluations, the unions coordinated a strike that lasted weeks.
Snowberger said there’s no such culture of conflict and blame in Durango.
He said when he is faced with tough decisions, he doesn’t hesitate to call Gretchen Wilson, president of the DEA.
“She’s just a great partner,” said Snowberger.
Wilson’s renewed tenure with the DEA comes after the resignation of Elizabeth Collins, a Durango High School social studies teacher and the DEA’s former president. At the time of her departure, Collin’s wrote a “sayonara” op-ed to the district that was more in the tradition of a raised middle finger than the kumbaya mentality that’s won Durango plaudits from the NEA.
With Wilson back at the helm, kumbaya is back.
In a release about the NEA’s prize, Wilson said, “We are in a wonderful position right now, as Durango educators work side by side with all members of our district and community … addressing issues critical to the success of our students.”
Barker said she expects Durango’s district-union relationship to thrive.
She said she was to return to Durango this week to continue training teachers about transforming theory into practice in the classroom.
“No one is working in isolation in Durango,” she said. “They keep bringing their teams back for conversations, to really reflect on what their teaching practices do for students, how do we keep improving as a district.”
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
