The Durango District 9-R board started its meeting Tuesday night with a song from most of the Durango High School choir members headed to perform at Disneyland before getting down to the important business of analyzing the impact of the rolling bus cancellations that began in January.
“We’re into our second month, and there aren’t definitive numbers,” said 9-R Superintendent Dan Snowberger. “We may need to continue into March because we’re being very critical of drivers in training to make sure they’re ready.”
The district just held one trainee back for another week to make sure he was ready, Snowberger said.
The district is seeing a larger impact on the rural schools, with 15 students at Animas Valley Elementary School, for example, having absences directly affected by transportation, with another 25 absent without comment the days when its bus routes were cancelled. Miller Middle School has seen a number of students arrive 10 to 15 minutes late.
The cancellations have not always gone smoothly, Snowberger said.
“Despite the posting on the website and reminders we’ve sent to parents that a bus route is canceled for the day, they forget that today is the day my bus is canceled,” he said. “This hasn’t just impacted our students and families but our principals, who have been staying late with students whose parents forgot.”
The district is also talking to the city of Durango about sharing bus drivers because the city likes to keep drivers’ hours below the level needed to confer benefits, and the school district, which generally needs them for five hours a day, provides both health insurance and retirement benefits.
In other business:
Public charter school Mountain Middle School presented a formal resolution asking the board to include it in any mill levy request, which would be allocated on a per-student basis. Animas High School, the other public charter school in Durango, is also discussing making a similar request. The board was surprised MMS requested it receive funding retroactively from the mill levy.
Also, Durango High School Principal Leanne Garcia presented the progressing changes happening at the school as it transitions out of the Small Learning Communities format and changes the advising structure.
“We’re not in a place where I think we have to have something new or in place for next year,” she said. “We’ve had high-level professional training over the past four years, and that will continue.”
It’s important for people to understand this is not just an abrupt end of SLCs, Snowberger said.
“Durango High School continues to evolve beyond SLCs,” he said, adding that what teachers have leaned will carry over. “A best practice is a best practice is a best practice. Teachers have learned to get students engaged and excited about learning.”
The day-to-day teaching of courses such as language arts didn’t vary greatly between SLCs, Garcia said, but students experienced barriers on the electives they could take.
One concern for parents is that their incoming ninth-graders might get lost in the 1,100-student school, she said.
“Interestingly, most of the students weren’t worried about that,” Garcia said.
Garcia and her staff are also working on changing the advising/counseling structure at DHS, where the same academic advisor and social/emotional support counselor would be involved with the same group of students throughout their four years at the school.
abutler@durangoherald.com
