I got a sad chuckle out of the column (Herald, Dec. 3) by Durango School District 9-R Superintendent Dan Snowberger bemoaning the fact that he can’t find qualified personnel for a number of positions in the district, a deficit that is having a genuine impact on the students and families of Durango. One of Dan’s mistakes has been to assume that when he blows a hard-working, dedicated professional out the door, there will be 10 highly qualified people waiting in line to take his place – for less money. That may be the case in Denver or Colorado Springs, but it’s not always the case in Durango.
After a couple of years under Snowberger, the staffing shortage represents some of the first chickens coming home to roost. In trying to turn Durango’s school district from a warm, welcoming, slightly anarchic place into a microcosm of the cold, impersonal Front Range districts, he is doing the families of Durango a disservice. Many people live here in part to get away from that sense of depersonalization.
I personally would like nothing better than to have Dan and his carpetbagging cronies from the Front Range, a crew with no genuine investment in Durango but who rather view the district as a manageably sized laboratory for their fiscal and educational experiments, return from whence they came. The district could then restore a modicum of local control by people who recognize the tradition and ethos of Durango.
His columns in the Herald are part of an almost pathological need to control the message for his benefit, but they only tell part of the story.
Joe Green
Durango
