Durango School District Board elections are approaching, with ballots arriving Oct. 14. Please cast your vote to re-elect our incumbents: Erika Brown, Rick Petersen and Andrea Parmenter. Their policies have resulted in steadily rising student test scores, and rising indexes of satisfaction from parents and students.
95% of our students graduate from high school. That reflects school board, administration and teacher success addressing the obstacles students may face, such as social bullying and alienation.
Many graduates have already earned college credits, saving $7M in college expenses and enabling these young adults to move forward with a firm foundation of knowledge and confidence. Find more details of DSD accomplishments in Superintendent Dr. Karen Cheser’s excellent column (Herald, Sept. 21).
Our incumbent candidates again face inexperienced opponents driven by ideology. This year, a Front Range PAC is expected to flood Durango with outside funding for these opponents. “Road to Red” PAC is the vehicle of self-described “MAGA” activist Heidi Ganahl for flipping school boards across Colorado toward an “anti-woke” agenda of intolerance and censorship. Expect to see ads promoting this year’s crop of smiling, secretly extreme candidates. Their underlying focus seems to be creating division by attacking specific groups – something we just don’t need.
Let’s celebrate all of our stellar students, and appreciate our teachers and school board for their dedication to next generations. Vote for the caring, inclusive, results-driven success of our incumbent board members Andrea Parmenter, Rick Petersen and Erika Brown.
Kirby MacLaurin
Durango
