With the unanimous support of directors, the Durango School District 9-R Board of Education affirmed that the Black Lives Matter flag and an iteration of the LGBTQ pride flag, known as the progress pride flag, are consistent with the district’s policies, curriculum and values Tuesday night.
The vote concludes a monthslong saga that began in October when the district told teachers to remove the flags from classrooms in response to a parental complaint.
But with ambiguous threats against board members made on social media and a concrete threat from the Colorado Republican Party to bankrupt the district, the packed Impact Career Innovation Center was tense in advance of the vote on two controversial resolutions.
The 140 attendees allowed inside – a reduced capacity cap in response to security concerns – fell quiet before the board president could hush them and call the room to order; school resource officers circulated in the crowd and neon vest-clad observers stood watch around the room.
Darcy Shoening, the Colorado Republican Party’s director of special initiatives who is running for party chair, showed up unannounced. The El Paso County resident had tagged Durango School District 9-R in a Facebook post about the board members earlier in the week saying, “I’d love to cause harm to each of you and your livelihoods for the harm you are doing to children.”
But the calls to rally in opposition of the resolutions made by Shoening and other conservative leaders from outside the district had little effect. Just a handful of people showed up in protest, their opposition group dwarfed by a phalanx of rainbow-wrapped supporters. None of those opposed to the resolutions were early enough to claim one of the 10 public comment spots.
The juxtaposition wasn’t lost on the crowd.
“If we continue to allow a few, loud, hateful individuals to determine the course of our community and our nation, then we risk repeating history,” said Teri Kopack, a 9-R teacher, in a public comment that warned of the horrors of Nazi Germany.
The flag debate has pitted the district’s inclusion efforts against a small, but vocal group of detractors who argue the flags are a tool of political indoctrination. Although a few 9-R parents have spoken previously against the presence of the BLM and pride progress flags in schools, the loudest objections have come from those who neither live in the district nor have children who attended Durango schools.
During public comment Tuesday, several parents and students spoke directly to that group’s claims, as well as the efficacy of the flags themselves.
A Durango High School student, who identified himself only as Parker, described the fear he felt coming out as transgender to a teacher.
“She immediately accepted me and told me her classroom was a safe space for me. To this day, it still is,” he said. “Seeing the pride pins on her lanyard made me feel I was safe and my education would not be in jeopardy because of my gender identity.”
The presence of flags that represented him in the classroom saves lives, Parker said, including his own, noting that “Representation is not indoctrination.”
In a statement before the vote, board Vice President Erika Brown sought to quiet some of the misconceptions around the district’s intentions.
“There’s a lot of rhetoric that’s being thrown around about what this is about. But it’s not political – it’s not a lot of things that have been said,” she said. “It’s really about making sure our kids are safe in our schools. That’s all it’s about.”
9-R pursued the resolutions as part of a legal loophole that allows the district to voice its own speech without making schools a limited public forum open to all political speech. The tactic withstood a lawsuit in Denver late last year. And although the GOP has threatened to sue 9-R over the resolutions, none of the parties making the threats so far would likely have any standing in court.
The district received a deluge of public comment on the matter via email, another board member said. Over three quarters of it supported the resolutions.
“It means the world to our community and to our youth who have been stressing about this since October,” said Xander Hughes, executive director of the Four Corners Rainbow Youth Center in an interview after the vote. “And it’s nice that they can have a space now where they, at least for now, are safe and validated and are affirmed, because that’s ultimately what we’re all trying to do.”
rschafir@durangoherald.com
