Are you racist? The Durango School Board thinks so.

By Protect La Plata Kids | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

Durango School District 9-R has spent heavily on a quiet plan to bring diversity, equity and inclusion policies into local classrooms. Attached to this commentary are invoices obtained through CORA requests to the district. They show the board paid Make It Plain Consulting more than $209,000 between 2021 and 2025.

A combined file of the invoices can be viewed here.

What the community didn’t realize is that the board’s long-term goal was to introduce Critical Race Theory under the banner of DEI. School board directors Kristen Smith, Erika Brown and Andrea Parmenter started by pushing a new resolution for the Durango 9-R Board of Education.

As of July 2025, three Federal Civil Rights Complaints were filed against Durango School District (formerly known as Durango School 9-R) for discrimination by newly adopted resolutions. Complaints were based on race discrimination, segregated graduations, and race hiring practices. The complaints were filed by Mountain States Legal Foundation and could result in losing almost $8 million in federal funding.

Resolution: Diversity, equity and inclusion

We know from earlier CORA requests that former Superintendent Dan Snowberger emailed the board rejecting the claim that systemic racism and injustices existed in the schools. 

Email from Superintendent Dan Snowberger to board member Andrea Parmenter (Jan. 11, 2021) warning that many 9-R staff were insulted by the equity resolution’s language, which he said unfairly condemned district employees as culprits of inequity.

In a follow-up email, Board member Andrea Parmenter raised concerns about the resolution. Parmenter stated in an email, “Why not just adopt a statement along the lines of, ‘White people really suck and we have been and will always be collectively racist and we know it.’”

Email from Durango 9-R board member Andrea Parmenter to Superintendent Dan Snowberger (Jan. 11, 2021) criticizing the draft equity resolution and writing that the language was so biased it might as well have said, “White people really suck and we have been and will always be collectively racist and we know it.”

In the end, board members told district teachers and staff they were racist and presented a DEI resolution to implement change in the district.

Durango School District 9-R’s DEI resolution adopted January 26, 2021, committing to third-party DEI consultants and a formal land acknowledgment.

Resolution acknowledgements

WHEREAS, the District acknowledges the presence of harmful injustices that extensive research has shown to exist at the intersections of race, class, religion, gender, sexuality and abilities; and (classic critical race theory rhetoric).

WHEREAS, Durango School District 9-R (the “District”) strives to be an equitable, inclusive educational system and community — a place where all students, staff and family members feel valued, safe and welcome; and

The Durango School Board’s commitment

THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Board will engage third-party subject matter experts specializing in diversity, equity and inclusion for the purpose of identifying systemic racism and injustices throughout the district and providing recommendations and actions to ensure all stakeholders are served equitably.

The board spent more than $209,000 between 2021 and 2025 on Make It Plain Consulting of Cincinnati, Ohio, to execute its agenda. Staff were told to confront their racism and identify harmful injustices. On August 19, 2022, the district held a professional development day that cost $73,460.95. The agenda was titled Inclusive Excellence PD Training.

District communication to staff showing the Inclusive Excellence PD Training agenda for August 19, 2022, which required completion of the Harvard Implicit Association Test as pre-work.

The first agenda item was “Confronting Implicit Bias in the Classroom and District.”

Inclusive Excellence PD Training session on “Confronting Implicit Bias in the Classroom and District.”

Make It Plain Consulting addressed about 700 staff on three kinds of bias that impact education:

• Implicit bias
• Cultural bias
• Systems bias

Part of the requirement was for staff to take an online test.

Email to staff

Hello lovely staff!

Welcome back! We are excited to host session two of our Inclusive Excellence Professional Development this Friday, August 19 from 8:00 am – 4:00 pm at Durango High School. As a reminder, Inclusive Excellence is a required training for all staff in our district. Tommie Lewis and his team will facilitate this training aligned with our district’s goals of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB). HERE is the agenda for the day.

Prework: Complete the Implicit Association Test

Instructions:

• Test must be taken from a laptop or PC.
• Please complete two (2) tests of your choice.
• Print or screenshot results and bring to the PD.

District staff email requiring staff to complete two Harvard Implicit Association Tests and bring results to the PD.

The email instructed staff to access the Implicit Association Test online at: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html

A teacher in the district said the RACE test was required.

The Harvard Implicit Association Test required for staff pre-work asked participants to associate “Good” and “Bad” with with White and Black faces.

The district continues its relationship with Make It Plain Consulting, paying $5,000 for each quarterly visit. These visits include two hours with the Inclusive Excellence committee. The last invoice was paid for a session in February 2025.

Make It Plain Consulting billed Durango 9-R $48,960.95 for August 2022 professional development, including facilitation, airfare, lodging, transportation, and materials.

Durango 9-R’s Significant Disproportionality Action Plan (2022–23) shows quarterly Inclusive Excellence professional development for all staff, confirming the DEI training was ongoing and systemic.

Board President Kristen Smith and Vice President Erika Brown lead the committees for Cultural Design and Equity. The board paid Tommie Lewis, CEO of Make It Plain Consulting, to help create two complementary resolutions tied to the DEI agenda. In December 2024, Lewis drafted the LGBTQ and Black Lives Matter resolutions. In one email, the document attachment name read, “Draft Nonwhite Resolution.”

Tommie Lewis of Make It Plain Consulting sent district staff a draft labeled “Nonwhite Resolution” on Dec. 5, 2024.

School board commitment

Black Lives Matter resolution

Durango School District 9-R’s IBPOC resolution authorizing Black Lives Matter and Brown Lives Matter signs in classrooms and offices.

LGBTQIA2S+ resolution

Durango School District 9-R’s LGBTQIA2S+ resolution passed January 28, 2025, supporting Pride flags, SAGA clubs, and all-gender restrooms. Within the IBPOC resolution packet, district correspondence shows controversy over a political typology quiz given to 6th graders, raising concerns about DEI-driven classroom content.

How do we compare?

Parents struggle to comprehend the amount of money being spent on a theory that assumes all White people have implicit racial bias and must confront it. Meanwhile, little has changed with student outcomes, despite the board’s claims.

Recent 2025 CMAS scores (grades 3–8):

• Sunnyside Elementary is the lowest scoring school in the district, with 68% of children NOT proficient in English Language Arts and 79% NOT proficient in Math.
  
• Districtwide averages: 50% of children cannot read or write at grade level, and 56% cannot do Math.

Durango School District 2025 CMAS results show proficiency rates below state averages in English and Math.

Comment from a Durango School 9-R parent (from the board’s website):

“Under Coherent Governance, the Board is responsible for clearly defining what students should know and be able to do by the time they graduate from high school. The Board consciously stays out of the district’s day-to-day management decisions and adopts policies that give the superintendent the authority to select the resources, teachers and educational programs that he or she believes best serve student-learning needs.”

It appears the board is telling parents their kids should know about and engage in gender ideology, critical race theory and identity politics when they graduate from high school. It also appears the board is consciously inserting itself into day-to-day management of political symbols that may or may not be displayed by staff, despite what they say they are supposed to do.

Durango deserves a school board that supports all expression as guaranteed by our Constitution, not a board that forces compelled or selective expression.

In conclusion

Durango School District’s test scores have been on a steady decline since 2010. Parents and taxpayers are fed up with the current school board’s plan to imprint on the hearts and minds of staff and children an agenda of critical race theory. The board has incorporated gender and queer ideology to confuse students and parents to gain control of the community through the lens of education.

Parents need a change, and we need it now. This November, vote out school board directors Erika Brown, Andrea Parmenter and Rick Peterson. Ask these school board directors to resign: Kristen Smith and House District 59 representative Katie Stewart. It is insulting to parents that Katie Stewart, a paid Democrat politician, is allowed to hold a seat on the self-proclaimed apolitical Durango School Board.

Protect La Plata Kids is a grassroots parent advocacy group in La Plata County that works to defend parental rights and push for transparency in public schools. The group brings together parents, grandparents, and community members to support policies that keep families involved in decisions about children’s education and well-being.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.