False report, bad judging, real results: Montezuma schools find their footing

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice

For two difficult years, Superintendent Tom Burris and the Montezuma-Cortez board were cast as the problem in a community at odds. Detractors said they buried misconduct.

The situation became a tangle of problems—courtroom misconduct, staff discipline, politicized claims and social-media outrage—all amplified by one-sided reporting that drained time, money and focus.

The photo that never should have existed

A courtroom image of Superintendent Burris ran the next morning on the front page of The Journal. No photographs are permitted inside a Colorado courtroom—a violation later cited in the judge’s ethics case.

“No photographs are permitted inside a Colorado courtroom,” attorney David Illingworth recalled. “The next day it was front-page news—with a photo that never should have been taken.”

The Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline later determined that Judge Ian MacLaren had “wrongfully presumed Mr. Burris guilty,” lied during its investigation, and misused his office. In September 2025 the commission issued a Notice of Proceedings recommending his removal for conduct “incompatible with judicial integrity.” The decision is still pending.

Coverage of the investigation appeared in Colorado Politics, Complete Colorado, and The Durango Herald.

The superintendent who came back

Burris knew Montezuma well. He’d served over a decade in the district before going to Roswell, New Mexico as superintendent, where he retired. That was short lived—a Montezuma board member reached out to him in 2022 asking him to return as interim superintendent.

“I wasn’t looking to come back,” Burris shared. “I was retired—but they needed stability, and I said I’d help for a few months.”

In his earlier years with the district, Burris balanced the books and launched early-literacy programs. His later work in Roswell—focusing on teacher retention and accountability—shaped the approach he brought back home. 

After a formal search among nine total candidates, he was offered the permanent post. Some staff welcomed the structure. Others bristled at the renewed accountability.

The false report that started it all

The courtroom drama grew out of a lie—and, Burris says, a grudge.

Former HR director Cindy Eldredge secretly recorded him during what he thought was a routine staffing call. Burris said her conduct in HR had already raised alarms.

“She had gone into the HR system and changed job-posting requirements so her son would qualify for a position,” he recalled. “We confirmed it through IT. It wasn’t speculation—it was a data trail.”

The district also prevailed in an unemployment claim that cited the same issue—the manipulation of job descriptions to benefit Eldredge’s son, Casen. Records showed he received more than 50 days of sick-bank leave, another example of how Eldredge used her position to favor her family.

He called the incidents “insubordination and manipulation of district procedures,” and said it led to her dismissal. “This wasn’t about policy,” Burris said. “It was revenge. She was angry that I held her accountable.”

After being fired, Eldredge circulated the recording and gave a copy to local activist JJ Lewis, who took it to the Cortez Police Department, alleging Burris failed to report a teacher-student relationship.

Police opened a case and referred it to then–District Attorney Christian Hatfield, who charged Burris under C.R.S. §19-3-304, relying largely on a partial, out-of-context recording and on Lewis’s report.

The irony, Burris said, is that he’d already seen a Safe2Tell tip naming “Cindy Eldredge” as the “Aggressor.” That report, which he later shared by email, was never investigated. Detective Shane Fletcher told HR Director Justin Schmitt the DA would “start with Mr. Burris” and “would not pursue Eldredge.”

 The Safe2Tell form that accused Eldredge —not Burris — of failing to report.

Email from then–HR Director Justin Schmitt summarizing Detective Fletcher’s call with the district attorney regarding the Safe2Tell report.

The student’s mother later confirmed she had never alleged a sexual relationship. “When Mr. Burris asked me,” she wrote, “I made absolutely clear that was not true.”

Two months later Hatfield was voted out. After taking office, District Attorney Jeremy Reed reviewed the file, found no probable cause and closed the case with prejudice—it couldn’t be refiled. 

Burris later sued JJ Lewis for defamation, claiming Lewis knowingly gave false information to law enforcement and the state’s human-services agency. The civil case remains pending.

When the courtroom crossed a line

At that February 2024 hearing, Judge MacLaren convened what lawyers describe as an unauthorized proceeding after the case had already been resolved.

“The judge starts ranting and raving,” Illingworth said, “trampling on the presumption of innocence.”

Investigators later found text messages between Judge MacLaren and reporter Cameryn Cass that showed he’d invited her to the hearing. Later he complimented her story and courtroom photo.

While the ethics probe unfolded, public perception had already hardened. A few headlines and one image were enough to convince many that guilt was settled.

Text messages between reporter Cameryn Cass and Judge Ian MacLaren, introduced as Exhibit E in the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline case, show Cass sharing the same courtroom photo and article link with the judge.

Outrage as oxygen

The damage was done by the time the ethics investigation began.

Colorado Times Recorder ran a feature titled “Bully: The Crisis of Leadership in Montezuma-Cortez Schools,” quoting Eldredge extensively but omitting that she was under scrutiny herself. The Journal echoed the same storyline, and KSJD framed Burris’s later retirement as resignation under scandal. 

The story spread quickly online, echoing through Facebook threads and comment sections long after the facts were known.

“Quit believing everything you read,” said State Board of Education member Sherrie Wright. “Get off social media. Quit griping and start supporting education.”

Rebuilding systems and standards

Inside the district office, the work of repair had already begun.

What started as damage control soon became a rebuild of systems and expectations.

Executive Director of Academic Services Justin Schmitt, then HR director, said staffing decisions now revolve around one test: what’s best for students.

“Staff members are not terminated frivolously. There’s cause,” he said. “Our primary consideration has to be whether students are in a safe learning environment and being instructed by qualified staff.”

Board President Sheri Noyes said the district also confronted years of neglected accounting and HR practices. “We had stipends still being accounted for with no position for years—just cleaning things up.”

Some of the most urgent fixes came in special education, where a compliance review found “46 out of 46 files” were out of spec. That discovery prompted a complete reset of services for the district’s most vulnerable students.

“We want to have high expectations for all students,” Schmitt said. “But we also want to give students who need it the support they need and those who need to be challenged the opportunities.”

Transparency followed close behind. “People talk about transparency—they have no idea how untransparent we were before Tom,” Wright said. “Even the board didn’t know a lot of what was going on.”

An administrative law judge also upheld the dismissal of a high-school teacher for policy and professionalism violations — not for any rumor-driven claims.

Excerpt from the Administrative Law Judge’s 2024 recommended decision in the Kelley case, documenting the district’s personnel actions under state law. Source: Colorado Office of Administrative Courts (Kimberly Kelley v. Montezuma-Cortez School District RE-1, Sept. 17 2024).

Burris said what impressed him most was that, through it all, staff “kept showing up and doing their jobs,” even when headlines said otherwise.

From flatline to forward motion

Four years ago, Montezuma-Cortez ranked near the bottom of Colorado’s 178 districts, hovering around 176th. Today it has climbed more than 40 places in the state’s performance rankings—no schools on turnaround, steady gains in literacy and math, and, for the first time in decades, a sense of forward motion.

“I knew we were on life support—but honestly, we were flatlining, and I didn’t even know it,” Noyes said. “Do you want diplomas that mean something or a high graduation rate?”

Schmitt said the next challenge is shifting from catching up to competing. “We’ve done well in the area of growth,” he said. “But we also realize that achievement is the area that needs to be focused on next.”

Voters approved a mill levy after the board rewrote it “the correct way,” Noyes said, and starting teacher salaries rose from $31,500 to $47,000—the most competitive entry-level pay the district has offered in years.

Schmitt summarized the improvement: “For two years in a row the district scores went up—from 39.2 percent to 51.2 percent—even with a small dip, it’s still the second-highest number of points we’ve ever earned.”

“Progress doesn’t happen in a straight line,” Schmitt added. “It’s more like the stock market—a jagged line that keeps trending upward if you stay the course.”

Montezuma-Cortez School District RE-1 performance ratings, 2019–2024, showing district accreditation improvement from “Priority Improvement” to “Improvement Plan.”

The view from both sides of the desk

Few people know Tom Burris better than Sherrie Wright, who has worked both for him and above him.

“When I first met him, he was my boss,” she laughed. “Then I went on the board and I became his boss… then I taught again and he was my boss again… now I’m on the state board, and I’m his boss again. We’ve traded places many times, but we’ve always respected each other and worked well together.”

She calls him “steady—the same guy whether he’s taking orders or giving them.”

Grace, growth—and the road ahead

The district’s recovery hasn’t erased the memory of those years when rumor drowned out fact. Even now, board members say some critics continue to question decisions long settled by evidence. Yet many parents who once doubted the board now point to steady progress as proof that things are moving in the right direction.

Noyes has learned to keep perspective. “I choose to give them a little more grace than they ever gave us,” she said.

For Schmitt, real recovery isn’t about headlines or rankings—it’s about returning to purpose. “The focus should be on creating learning environments that are safe and conducive to learning. The wants of the adults in our organization can’t outweigh the needs of the students.”

The fight has taken its toll with legal bills, lost time and two years of scrutiny. Burris, who came out of retirement to steady the district, plans to leave before his contract is up.

He said the district has made real progress but still has work ahead—rebuilding a culture, he added, doesn’t happen overnight.