By Greta Anderson
Debate continues in Manitou Springs School District 14 over whether a “dramatic” jump in staff turnover is due to administrative leadership failures or just a sign of the post-pandemic times.
D14 parents, who formed the group Stand Up for Manitou earlier this year, are questioning whether what’s been called the “jewel of small schools in the area” no longer fits that description.
More than 50 staffers, nearly half of them teachers, have left the district over each of the past two years, according to attrition data presented to the D14 school board in June and staff numbers that D14 reported to the Colorado Department of Education.
The departures — which include retirements and resignations — caused D14’s attrition rate to more than double from 8.77 percent during the 2019-2020 school year to 24.31 percent during 2020-2021, the data show.
SUFM, which includes about 60 D14 families and is led by MSHS parent Brenda Holmes-Stanciu, decided to investigate reasons through an independent survey of former staff members; Holmes-Stanciu said D14’s school board and Superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Domangue were unwilling to pursue it themselves.
Domangue, however, said she contacted the third-party firm that the group suggested conduct a survey, but did not hear back.
The results of that survey, which included 53 staff members who left during the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years, excluding bus drivers and kitchen staff, were shared last week. They show that respondents primarily left D14 over issues with leadership and culture — and multiple respondents specifically mentioned Domangue, who started as superintendent in July 2019.
The attrition and staff perspectives are troubling to parents in SUFM, as they worry the trusting and tight-knit culture that has defined their small school district for years is being lost, Holmes-Stanciu said.
“That’s one of the reasons that people have been so upset, is because many of them saw what was happening,” she said. “They knew what they had, they knew it wasn’t perfect. But they saw it slipping through the cracks.”
Pandemic-related exit?
Domangue has maintained that what’s happening in D14 is “not unique” among school districts.
The COVID pandemic caused upheaval for staffers and many decided to move on for personal reasons, or they could not afford to live in the Manitou-Colorado Springs area, which lacks affordable housing for anyone on an educator’s salary, she said.
But SUFM said this is not so, according to survey results from Newmeasures, the Colorado-based firm the group hired to formulate and analyze the survey. The firm produces employee surveys for various organizations, including some school boards, Newmeasures President Lee Stroud said.
Domangue questioned how accurately the survey represents the sentiments of former staff, since it captured responses from only about half of the people who left in those two years.
She said that the survey results were not “unusual or surprising” compared to what D14 has found in its own exit surveys, which it sends to staff when they leave. But she acknowledged that the 2019 change in leadership, her emphasis on “instructional leadership” and decisions during the pandemic could have produced a difficult environment for some.
“I think that sometimes through the pandemic … there were lose/lose decisions — remote or hybrid, wearing a mask, not wearing a mask,” Domangue said.
“Oftentimes, when you made those decisions, you knew that one decision was going to be what one person wanted to hear, and another person did not want to hear. Unfortunately, that was the responsibility all of us in the superintendency had to carry.
“I fully understand how a lot of those decisions might have been hard to receive,” she added. “It was a difficult time.”
Domangue also said she could see how the district’s more hands-on, instructional leadership style — for which she said the D14 board hired her — could cause “a little bit of stress” among teachers.
“Our principals and our staff are in classrooms more, and I see that as positive,” she said. “I do think that was a shift for Manitou.”
SUFM said the former staffers who responded to the survey paint a more worrisome picture.
Only 15 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they “had a trusting relationship with district leadership” and 64 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed that D14 “inspired confidence in the future of the district.”
Twenty-one respondents selected “district leadership” as one of their top three reasons for leaving D14, and 14 selected “district culture,” over other options like “seeking improved work-life balance” (nine selections) and “higher compensation” (eight), according to an executive summary.
Other options related to the pandemic and economy, such as “burnout as a result of COVID restrictions” and “cost of living,” did not make it into the top 10 reasons.
“The data clearly support that there’s a clear lack of trust in district leadership and a lack of confidence in the future of the district,” said Stroud, of Newmeasures. “People didn’t feel that there was open, transparent communication and questioned whether the district was really doing right by employees.
“When we look at the comments, to really provide context into the quantitative data, we really see that it’s this feeling of unilateral decision-making, and again, people are not feeling comfortable speaking up,” she added.
Staffers appear split
One former building leader who participated in the survey said they left the district because of Domangue’s leadership.
The leader, who requested anonymity due to fear of losing future job prospects, said they started to see “red flags” that became more apparent during the pandemic, when the onus was put on teachers to figure out how to push through the health crisis.
“These are individuals who are excellent teachers, but [they were] being asked to solve problems that have never existed in a public school,” the building leader said. “What I saw was the stress and anxiety that was inducing in them — asking a sophomore world history teacher to figure out how we’re going to physically place students, balance remote and asynchronous instruction, things like that.
“That became more problematic when it was evident that we weren’t actually building or making any of these decisions; we were being told what would happen and then figuring out how we were going to make that happen,” they added. “I viewed it as far too onerous [on] teachers.”
But at least one current teacher, Cory Urban, who has taught sixth grade math at Manitou Springs Middle School for seven years, said she doesn’t trust the survey results and feels SUFM has an agenda.
Of the colleagues Urban knows left her school, “none of them left because of our leadership, district or school,” she said. That’s “one reason that I don’t necessarily trust this survey.”
“There was a lot of animosity at the end of our last school year, and a lot of division brought on by this particular group,” she said. “It kind of goes both ways — there’s a lack of trust from this group in the administration, and there’s a lack of trust from a large group of teachers in this organization.
“I happen to be of the opinion that we have some of the absolute hardest-working leadership in our state, really, and that high standards for our principals and high standards for our teachers is not a bad thing.”
The former building leader, however, doesn’t believe that Domangue’s assessment of the turnover — that it was primarily related to family issues and pandemic impacts — is accurate.
“Now seeing that these parents have collected data that is saying, yes, people are leaving because of family, pay, COVID, leaving the profession — that is accurate, but it’s not in the top three reasons why people are leaving,” the building leader said. “I think that is a telling narrative.
“Do I think the district is being dishonest? I’m reserving judgment on that,” they said. “However, by not formally collecting that data in that way, are they missing a major improvement strategy? Absolutely.”
SUFM would like to see data collection continue among D14’s current staff, to determine whether the issues brought up in the Newmeasures survey are prevailing. Domangue said the district is preparing to analyze the attrition issue in multiple ways.
D14’s District Accountability Committee
will review retention and recruitment efforts, and the district is looking into procuring K12 Insight, an education-focused research and engagement firm, for culture, climate and exit surveys, Domangue said.
The goal is to “continue to see what we’re doing well, what we can do better and celebrate the great things in our school district,” she said. “And that’s the same for understanding why someone might decide to leave either Manitou or the profession. All of that’s important.”
The D14 board also received the survey; Holmes-Stanciu said it was presented to Board President Natalie Johnson and Vice President Jack Sharon on Sept. 12.
Johnson emailed that “We acknowledge the information,” noting that some of the survey respondents’ view of the district is from two years ago.
Board directors “recognize that the school district has been working through attrition (as I am sure all school districts are) and look forward to outcomes from the District Accountability Committee regarding retention and recruitment,” Johnson wrote.