By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice
Durango School District 9-R holds its State of the District tonight at the Impact Career Innovation Center. The district’s event page bills it as a community update with test-score dashboards and a Q&A. The Durango Herald said leaders plan to confront “misinformation.” Parent Jason Mietchen hears it differently: “We’ve had to counteract the misinformation for years. The school puts out a ton of it.”
Why attention spiked this month
The Herald also referenced Heidi Ganahl’s twelve-part ‘Durango’s 9-R Dirty Dozen,’ a wide-ranging critique of district policy, practice and the outcomes families are talking about. Topics span CMAS proficiency, gender-support steps, the ACA name-change policy, flag resolutions and the government-speech argument, $200,000 in DEI consulting and the 48-count federal indictment of a former teacher on child-exploitation charges. And posts by teachers and a school official in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
What the district says will happen
The notice describes a one-hour program with recent highlights, data transparency, a question period and Spanish interpretation. District leaders say they will show the numbers and take questions. Mietchen pushed back on the celebratory framing: “They made around a two-point increase… we’re still right around 50%.“
“District wide, 50% can’t read or write and 56% can’t do math,” Ganahl says in Day 8.
A Sept. 2 RMV commentary shows the district’s 2025 CMAS results and notes averages of 50% not at grade level in ELA and 56% in math, with Sunnyside at 68% ELA and 79% math not proficient.
Durango School District 2025 CMAS results show proficiency rates below state averages in English and Math.
Gender support, names and notification
Internal emails show the superintendent and board discussing Colorado Association of School Boards (CASB) language in 2022, referencing internal processes for gender transition support.
In 2024 the board adopted a name-change policy that allows a student to use a chosen first name at school without a legal name change. Or parent notification—”if appropriate.”
In Day 4, Ganahl says the district’s gender-support plan was “developed with CASB guidance” and argues “it is not okay to be left out of these decisions,” urging clarity on who decides what and when parents are told. In Day 10, she adds, “A shocking policy lets school staff support kids’ gender transitions without parents even knowing,” citing “emails and internal school documents exposed through CORA requests.”
Flags, symbols and board actions
In January the board approved a resolution that supports staff displaying LGBTQIA2S+ pride symbols and commits to at least one all-gender restroom in every school.
Father Hunter Opilla, who has two sons in elementary and a daughter in middle school, said the district’s bathroom policy crosses a line. “My main concern aside from the divisive political flags they allow to be displayed in classrooms is the bathroom policy.” Opilla added, “The board and superintendent confirmed to me via email and at a board meeting I spoke at—that yes, biological males are permitted to use the girls’ restrooms in Durango 9-R schools if they identify with the female gender. This is a terrible policy that violates the privacy and security of our daughters.”
A companion resolution states support for posting Black Lives Matter and Brown Lives Matter symbols.
Day 6 opens with Ganahl saying the board “declared it government speech” so pride and IBPOC symbols stay while others do not. She points to the line that supports Black Lives Matter and Brown Lives Matter postings and calls it “a policy that favors some messages.”
Those claims mirror Title VI complaints now active with the U.S. Department of Education — flags and symbols, Native programming and equity hiring — and, to RMV’s knowledge, no districtwide family notice has gone out about their existence.
Hiring language and outside expertise
Board records from 2021 show equity-recruitment wording was added to the personnel policy after legal review. In 2023 the board adopted a diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging policy that authorizes staff training and the use of third-party experts. Invoices reviewed by RMV show payments to Make It Plain Consulting exceed $200,000 between 2022 and 2025 — including $45,019.26 billed for a single professional development (PD) day on March 28, 2022, $48,960.95 for August 19, 2022 and $39,651.71 for the October 2022 sessions.
“The district spent about $209,000 on DEI consultants,” Ganahl says in Day 3.
Mietchen contrasted “we’re out of money” district messaging with consultant invoices. “They can come up with $200,000 to blow on DEI trainings… You’re either out of money or you’re not… You can’t be both.”
He framed the spending as a tradeoff felt in classrooms. “Every hour that they spend on this is an hour they are not spending on academics… Good teachers are desperate for more resources.”
Safety, the federal case and communication
Benjamin Smith was charged in federal court in 2024. “Smith, a former Escalante Middle School teacher, faces 57 federal counts for sexually exploiting at least 37 minors, using his ‘inclusive’ classroom to groom students. The Durango 9-R school board’s focus on allowing teachers to prominently display their personal identities, such as through pride flags, overshadowed critical safety protocols, enabling this betrayal. Their preoccupation with symbolic gestures over robust predator-detection measures shows a dangerous lack of accountability that must be addressed to restore trust,” Durango mother Brit Hanson said in a statement to RMV.
On Day 2 Ganahl pressed, “How was Smith hired and what’s being done to prevent this?” She frames the issue as a safety failure that “endangered our children.”
Mietchen said the news reached him before the district did. “We found out about this in the local newspaper. I did not get a call from the school.” He argued the district should have “pulled the records of every student the teacher had taught and called every family” — then added, “As a parent, I would’ve really appreciated notice.”
Parents push back across the region
The local climate doesn’t stop at district lines. Day 11 tracks how comments by a Bayfield school board member and teachers in Bayfield and Ignacio, posted after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, spread quickly online and drew a wave of reaction. “Our schools should be sanctuaries for learning, not battlegrounds for hate and hypocrisy,” Ganahl says.
La Plata County resident Lisa Zimmerman said her posts reached tens of thousands and triggered a surge of messages to both districts. “On Sept. 10–11, Bayfield board director Molly Orendorff and Bayfield High School teacher Chris Ricci posted about Charlie Kirk. On Sept. 11, a parent described an Ignacio teacher’s comment to a grieving student,” she said. “Those went viral. Parents and citizens flooded the districts with emails and calls, and all three later resigned.”
Bayfield School District posted Orendorff’s immediate resignation and noted an ongoing staff investigation.
The Ignacio superintendent posted a letter to families acknowledging an investigation.
Zimmerman also posted about remarks by Durango teacher, Michael Fadil.
In a separate post she explained why parents stepped in. Referring to Kirk’s assassin, she wrote. “He was not born with hatred, he was taught… he was groomed in the very rooms we send our children to learn math, history and science.” She added, “We are not trying to silence anyone’s first amendment right… We demand truth and accountability, we have had enough.”
Her view echoes comments by parents, said at board meetings and in interviews. As Mietchen put it, “We’ve been cut off as parents,” he said, adding that he’s speaking up even if it’s hard, knowing the risk could be retribution against his children. “You might suffer some reprisals at school… but I have to do the right thing… lead by example,” and stand up “for your rights and your voice.”
Why parents say being heard is the point
Documents obtained through CORA by families range from score tables to policies— and a training deck that promotes integrating history with LGBTQ+ lessons in the K-12 curriculum, tying instruction to Colorado standards.
Hanson argues the practice “isn’t diversity” but an agenda—and that the trend is desensitizing and demoralizing children—while parents are excluded from the decision-making.
Another parent framed it as a question of what schools reward. “Our children’s future unites us all. Yet by favoring specific social groups, the district inadvertently strengthens those who already excel while normalizing ‘participation trophies’ for everyone else. This DEI rhetoric isn’t building unity—it’s creating divisions within our schools and community, and it undermines the personal accountability our youth desperately need,” Durango mother Amber Morris shared in a statement to RMV.
“If 9R continues down this path, we’ll be teaching our children to dodge responsibility instead of cultivating resilience. Let’s shift our focus to empowering them with the strength and self-reliance they need to thrive in a challenging world,” she added.
At the 5:30pm State of the District meeting tonight, parents and residents providing statements to RMV want the district to explain their definition of “misinformation” and reconcile their perspective of academic performance with what the CMAS data reveals. And acknowledge their concerns about how name, gender-transition support, flag and hiring policies and a forced-curriculum agenda affect their children.
The ‘Durango’s 9-R Dirty Dozen’ posts are available here:
Day 1 — OCR complaints overview
Day 2 — Federal case and district communication
Day 3 — Consultant spend
Day 4 — Gender support process
Day 5 — Parent allegation
Day 6 — Flags decisions and government-speech argument
Day 7 — State bill context
Day 8 — CMAS proficiency and trend lines
Day 9 — Bathrooms and privacy
Day 10 — Parent notification and documents
Day 11 — Regional climate examples
Day 12 — Closing message to district leaders
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