At its regular meeting on Wednesday, May 15, the school’s board of directors unanimously voted to approve the first reading of the new school director employment agreement with Emily Murphy, who is currently serving as assistant school director…
— from a story by reporter Clayton Chaney in the Pagosa Springs SUN newspaper, May 23, 2024.
For many schools in Colorado and around the U.S., Memorial Day Weekend marks the end of pencils, books, and computerized lessons, for three months of the summer.
For the students at Pagosa Peak Open School, however, June presents an opportunity for another month of educational activities.
The founders of PPOS — the community’s only District-authorized public charter school — designed the school in 2016 to continue operating through part of the summer, to allow staff and students to explore Pagosa Springs during its fertile warm-weather season with various outdoor-oriented pursuits. To allow time for these summer activities, the staff and students take short seasonal breaks during the rest of the year.
The intentionally-small school has a total of about 110 students, in grades Kindergarten through 8th grade.
Disclosure: I currently serve as a volunteer member of the PPOS Board of Directors, but this editorial reflects only my own personal opinions, and not necessarily the opinions of the Board as a whole.
This will be the final month in the school’s leadership role, for its current School Director, Angela Reali-Crossland, who has been guiding PPOS for the past five years. Ms. Reali-Crossland has taken a job as an educational consultant and trainer, and will be replaced by the school’s current Assistant Director, Emily Murphy.
Ms. Murphy was chosen for the School Director position last March, from a field of three finalists.
PPOS is publicly funded and open to all families in Archuleta County on a tuition-free basis. It operates under the authority of the Archuleta School District, but as a ‘school of choice’ according the Colorado’s Charter School Act of 1993, with its own independent school board, curriculum, budget, and hiring policies. The school is officially a Colorado non-profit organization with a volunteer Board of Directors, and that board recently negotiated an employment agreement with Ms. Murphy.
The PPOS board treasurer, Pamela Meade, served as the lead negotiator.
During the recruitment process for the School Director position, Ms. Reali-Crossland and her board had discussed ways to better distribute PPOS leadership authority and responsibilities, and those discussions are reflected in Ms. Murphy’s somewhat unique employment agreement.
For the 2024-2025 school year, the budget for the School Director will be $100,000, which will include a salary of $70,000 and a $10,000 benefits package. Also included in the agreement is a new $20,000 “administrative stipend fund” which can be utilized by the new School Director to compensate school staff for taking on special leadership duties during the coming year.
The employment agreement contains an appendix that outlines all of the roles and responsibilities associated with the stipend fund. These include management of school safety, substitute management, transportation management, school assessment testing coordinator, events and fundraising coordinator, ‘intensives’ coordinator, gifted team leader, and secondary food program manager.
One of the features at PPOS is its focus on ‘Restorative Practices’, an approach to conflict resolution that is now being tried in hundreds of school districts across the country. Ms. Murphy has been leading the development of Restorative Practices (more affectionately known as “RP”) for the past several years at PPOS, and recently wrote a grant to continue development of these practices.
Conflicts occur, in life. A conflict might involve two people, a group of people, or a whole society. In some cases, a rule or law may have been created, to define acceptable behavior, and although no actual person was harmed, the rule was violated.
Time for ‘retribution’? Punishment? This is a common response in some American institutions. What is the ultimate outcome of this approach?
How about ‘restitution’? Healing? Restoring relationships?
Studies have provided evidence that a ‘restitution’ approach ultimately generates superior outcomes.
To prepare for this alternative, ‘restitution’ type of discipline, classes at PPOS typically participate in a daily ‘circle’ meeting where students learn about healthy relationships and healthy responses, just as they might learn about reading or math.
The ‘circle’ not only helps to establish a shared culture… it also helps prepare everyone for the eventual occasions when conflicts occur. One tool used in these circles is the ‘talking piece’ — similar to the ‘talking stick’ used in American Indian traditions. The person holding the ‘talking piece’ shares their story or idea; the rest of the circle is expected to listen silently and respectfully.
A ‘Keeper’, who is also a participant in the circle, takes on the job of keeping the ‘talking piece’ moving and helps to maintain the protocols.
When conflicts do occur, one of the elements of Restorative Practices at PPOS may be a ‘conference’ where various participants are able to share their experiences and insights.
A restorative conference provides a forum for discussing and resolving the issues involved between students or between students and staff. Sometimes the situation is serious, with the ultimate possibility of suspension or expulsion; sometimes the situation is merely troubling. In some cases, a restorative conference may include parental involvement.
In all cases, the conference is more formal than the community-building circles and restorative chats; however, it retains some of the same foundational elements.
- A circle configuration
- A Keeper
- A talking piece
- Communication guidelines
At PPOS, a conference is preceded by ‘pre-conference interviews’ with a trained facilitator. Pre-conference interviews (with offenders, victims, key participants) take place before the conference to determine who should be present, and which issues should be discussed. The pre-conference interviews allow offenders and victims to choose whether to engage in a restorative process, or to choose, instead, a traditional ‘punishment’ approach, which might involve suspension, or — in the most serious cases — expulsion.
Last year, I asked Ms. Murphy if she had some thoughts about where this project is headed.
She wrote:
Helping students learn about and facilitate conflict resolution has been one of the joys of my work at PPOS. This young population sees conflict for what it is: people. They often go in with true curiosity — ready to be vulnerable, share their perspectives, find connections and be open to hearing others. They don’t shut themselves off to others who may have wronged them; they don’t walk away or use hurt as a way to solve a problem.
I have learned so much from watching them work toward resolutions, and am grateful that these moments have spilled over into my own growth. Seeing their work has helped build my own confidence, openness and action when it comes to facing confrontation, miscommunication, or harm.
Some of us — though certainly not all of us — believe that one of the consummate goals of humankind is the creation of a fair and equitable society, free from fear and violence.
It seems to me, so long as our society uses violence and punishment as its primary tools for controlling behavior, our children will grow up believing those are the best tools.
But what could our future world look like, if our children grew up learning that ‘restitution’ — instead of ‘retribution’ — was a viable option?
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.