The Durango School District 9-R Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday night to suspend a decision to remove from classrooms the Black Lives Matter flag and an iteration of the LGBTQ+ pride flag that included representation of the transgender community and people of color.
Board members expressed a desire to explore alternative ways to resolve a parental complaint filed Sept. 11, which alleged that the flags “are political symbols that (1) don’t belong in schools, and (2) indoctrinate students.”
The district informed teachers over the last two weeks that Black Lives Matter flags and the pride progress flag had to be removed by the end of Friday, Oct. 11. The directive was made to teachers, whose freedom of expression as public employees can be more tightly restricted than that of students. The decision was made in an effort to avoid a lawsuit and ensure the district did not open the door to political speech by teachers.
Members of the public, many draped in the very flags that prompted the complaint, filled the Impact Career Innovation Center to capacity and spilled out onto the patio for Tuesday’s board meeting. More than 100 students also walked out of class in protest of the decision Tuesday afternoon.
Students, parents, teachers and other members of the public used the hour allotted for public comment to express impassioned appeals for change.
Although the La Plata County Republican Central Committee members circulated notices for members to show up in support of “political neutrality in the classroom,” just a handful of people showed up in support of the ban.
Parents such as Doug Reynolds, who has two daughters in 10th grade, lambasted the decision, although he said he understood the district’s inclination to take the “easy route” to avoid litigation.
“This makes me, perhaps, the most disappointed with 9-R I’ve ever been,” he told the board. “… I’m calling on 9-R to now show some backbone.”
Reynolds was among several speakers who noted a recent ruling by a federal judge that a Denver school’s decision to display pride flags was a protected form of government speech.
Student speakers, many of whom were transgender or people of color, described feeling exclusion by the district’s decision to remove the flags.
Ari Geygan, a transgender student at Big Picture High School, described to the board his own mental health struggles in relation to his queer identity.
Geygan was shocked and angry when he heard about the decision, he said in an interview with The Durango Herald.
“I was staring at my ceiling like, ‘Am I deserving of going to school in the morning?’” he said. “Genuinely, I was like, ‘Am I allowed to be here?’”
Those who spoke in support of the ban were few and far between. A parent, who identified herself only as McKenzie, said the district should stand for inclusion of everybody.
“Put up the 10 friggin’ commandments,” she said, noting that her family was Christian.
But that message did not resonate in the room, where speaker after speaker emphasized that the inclusion of transgender students or students of color need not come at the exclusion of others.
“I don’t believe flags are a political symbol,” said Board Secretary Andrea Parmenter. “These are symbols of acceptance and diversity.”
Outside the board meeting after the vote, community members reveled in the decision – but were careful not to declare total victory.
“They’ve made the right call,” one teacher said. “This gives us two weeks and we’ll see what happens when they reconvene.”
District spokeswoman Karla Sluis said it was unknown when exactly the board would be able to discuss and formally resolve the complaint, but that it would likely come up for discussion at a work session in two weeks.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
