NEDERLAND - On April 3, 2025, Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) representatives met with teachers, staff, and parents at Nederland Middle-Senior High School (NMSHS) to discuss the district’s controversial decision to place Nederland Elementary School (NES) Principal Caleb Melamed in charge of the two schools.

The decision, made in the wake of NMSHS Principal Gavan Goodrich’s announcement of his retirement, was reached through a process that did not include input from the community, after emails from the district to concerned parents stated that there would be. 

NES meeting

At a meeting at NES on Tuesday, April 1, BVSD’s Assistant Superintendent of Schools Robbyn Fernandez clarified to parents that the district approved recommending Melamed for the position of NMSHS Principal to the superintendent of schools, who approved the recommendation to the Board of Education, who voted unanimously to approve Melamed’s appointment. 

Fernandez and Melamed were joined by Assistant Superintendent of Operations Rob Price, and Tamara Acevedo, Executive Director of the Northwest Network at BVSD, during the meeting at NES.

Those parents present stated that they were representing many other parents and staff members who did not feel comfortable commenting in person about the issue due to a culture of retribution that they believe has existed in the Nederland school system for many years.

Their concerns and comments to the district were related to the decision having been made unilaterally without their feedback, as well as having been made despite Melamed’s perceived lack of experience in secondary education.

Many parents also felt that BVSD’s decision will have a negative impact on the number of students attending Nederland schools and on future enrollment, which ultimately impacts the amount of funding each school receives. 

The district detailed to the community why Melamed was chosen for the position, stating his record as a stable and consistent leader and noting that his five years with NES has elicited positive results in student performance.

“What I bring is consistency, and I think that consistency in leadership is critical for the ongoing success of this school,” Melamed said in an interview with The Mountain-Ear. “And what this position will have is line-of-sight into both schools, which allows for maximizing resources, and it really adds to that notion of consistency, especially in a time of so many unknowns.” 

NMSHS meeting

On Thursday, April 3, 2025, Melamed, along with current NMSHS Principal Goodrich, NMSHS Assistant Principal/Athletic Director Sean DePaula, and BVSD representatives Acevedo, Fernandez, and Price, met with parents, teachers, and other school staff in the NMSHS library, prior to the monthly meeting of the Parent-Teacher Association. 

Over 50 people attended the meeting, which ran for over an hour and a half and consisted mostly of parents addressing their questions and concerns to Melamed and the district.

While some of the questions were similar to those asked at the NES meeting involving the district’s decision-making process, many parents wanted further clarification on that and other issues, including Melamed’s qualifications for the position, and on the data points that confirm the district’s claims of NES students’ improved performance. 

“Can you elaborate on the school board vote?” one attendee asked about the Board of Education’s unanimous vote to hire Melamed. “My understanding is that it was a bulk vote, where they voted on a number of hires all at once with no discussion involved. Is that true?”

Fernandez confirmed that the board did receive all information regarding the items on their agenda prior to a mass vote of their approval during their meeting, which was closed to the public.

It was reiterated that the board can deliberate when there is any dissent or objection to an individual matter on their agenda, though they did not do so in this case.

Melamed directly answered questions about his qualifications, explaining how his 13 years of being a classroom teacher and his Masters degree in Education from the University of Denver has prepared him for this position.

“This is my twentieth year working in public education, which has largely been in elementary schools,” Melamed said. “My principal licensure from the State of Colorado is a PK through 12 licensure.

“What we’ve done a good job of at the elementary school is supporting instruction, supporting teachers, using best practices, and that all of our work is aligned with the BVSD Strategic Plan.

“And I think those things carry over, and they may look slightly different in a high school setting, but the process is very similar.” 

To the question of what data points BVSD were using to determine positive student outcomes from NES’s performance, Fernandez described the matrices that are used.

“We are all judged, both as a collective district and as individual schools, by the state performance framework structure,” Fernandez explained. “Every school is assigned a score based on standardized testing and based on both student growth in different content areas, and student proficiency—grade-level proficiency.

“The students at the elementary school are performing at grade level at a tremendous rate that is much improved over times in the past.” 

The official BVSD website’s data dashboard, https://www.bvsd.org/about/data-driven, provides the results of metrics analysis for key performance indicators, school climate, proportionality, sustainability, and student enrollment. 

This data can provide parents insight into student well-being and cultural competency, on how well students are meeting or exceeding grade-level standards, and on student preparedness regarding life after high school. 

The district’s data dashboard shows that 71% of all BVSD students met or exceeded expectations in Reading and Writing in the previous school year, while 56% met or exceeded expectations in Math. 

90.6% of students felt that their teachers cared about them; 82.6% felt they belonged, and 20.7% felt that students at their schools are often bullied. 1.3% of students served one or more out-of-school suspensions, and 45.9% were given one or more “restorative interventions” for behavioral incidents.

For the 2023-2024 school year, 86% of all BVSD students graduated, with 22% receiving industry certifications, 25% earning Seals of Biliteracy, and 80% awarded with college credit. 

The dashboard also includes data illustrating the district’s steady decline in student enrollment since 2017. 

Principal Goodrich attempted to keep Thursday’s meeting civil and progressing forward. However, parents became increasingly frustrated, expressing that they were feeling as though the district was attempting to stifle their complaints.

The parents’ questions became more pointed and complex, including questions about the legality of not posting the open principal position publicly, about why DePaula was not considered for the position, and about previous complaints about Melamed, sent from parents and school staff to BVSD, being ignored.

To the question of whether it was illegal for the district not to post the job opening to the public in order to curate potential candidates, Fernandez quickly responded.

“I will stop you there, because one thing that was really important in our discussion about the hiring of the principal was to have a sitting principal,” Fernandez said. “This is an incredibly complex place to lead, as evidenced by our conversation, and that is part of why we have seen this really far-above-average turnover over time in this building.” 

Fernandez reiterated that the only requirements imposed on the district regarding hiring a school principal are that the Superintendent is responsible for making a recommendation to the Board of Education, and that the Board has the final vote.

As for the question as to why DePaula was not considered for the position, DePaula’s answer ended up causing more controversy.

“Some people have asked me if I’d be interested in the PK through 12 position,” DePaula said. “I think it’s a very tough position, and understanding of elementary is not something I have.”

Parents began speaking over one another, speculating whether simply replacing only the NMSHS Principal position was ever even considered as an option by the district. One attendee asked DePaula point blank if he would accept the position of NMSHS Principal, at which point Principal Goodrich attempted to gain control of the meeting.  

“That’s not relevant,” Goodrich said.

“I’m extremely excited about this decision of Caleb leading this, and I feel like I’ve sat at this meeting five or six times before, talking about the same thing,” Assistant Superintendent of Operations Price said to the room, referring to the many principals who have come and gone from NMSHS. 

“We could’ve easily been having other discussions about what to do here, and if that doesn’t show a commitment to Nederland I don’t know what does,” Price continued. “We could easily be having discussions about what to close, what to keep open; but when there’s this friction we are encouraging families to make other decisions.

“We all have to look in the mirror and ask ourselves why we are losing good people. We have to own this; the district has to own it, you as a community have to own it, but I just feel that we’re fighting still and I don’t know how to bring us together,” Price concluded. “This decision is made; now how do we move forward?”

“If you want us to not feel this way then you should’ve included us,” a parent passionately responded. “Now, you’re going to have to deal with these parents, Caleb, for the rest of your tenure at Ned. Stop telling us to not feel things that we clearly feel.

“You can either answer the questions honestly and we move together as a community or you can continue to gaslight us, not answer our questions and be defensive.”

 Community response

Though neither the NES or NMSHS meeting produced any outcome other than the parents receiving an apology from the district’s mishandling of the decision, there are those who are calling for more accountability and action.

One such Nederland parent, Lorrin Marsh, shared her correspondence with BVSD, which not only pressed for the complete revocation of the decision, but also for the implementation of legal language to ensure that the district can never make such unilateral decisions again. 

“We obviously have a lot of concerns going on here with the new restructuring and principal appointment being sprung on us,” Marsh’s email to BVSD reads. “The community is outraged by it for many reasons. I’ll give you three:

“One; there is no long term plan, and using the FTE (full-time equivalent) money for a transitional Dean does not set us up for long term success.

“Two; Caleb has ZERO secondary education experience and DePaula would have been a better choice as he has the experience, is actually respected, and is a true leader in our school who has good relationships with the kids, where Caleb does not.

“Three; the unresolved workplace harassment complaints and unanswered parent complaints about Caleb’s ‘in or out’ culture and bullying issues that have become prominent at NES.”

Marsh’s email continues with mention of a past scenario that implies both a potential conflict between an assistant to the principal and Melamed, and non-compliance by the District in investigating the matter. 

“They were a huge asset to our school, took a pay cut, a demotion, and an hour commute to get away from the unresolved issues,” Marsh wrote about the former NES staff member..

 “This was several years ago and was just ignored. Something wasn’t adding up so I called them. They said that Robbyn never emailed or called her to follow up. They are still willing to share their experience with Caleb if anyone would bother to listen.” 

Marsh brought this matter up directly to Assistant Superintendent of Schools Robbyn Fernandez during Thursday’s meeting. Fernandez responded by explaining the District’s complaint review process, which she described as “a full investigative process” that is “determined by a team over time.”  

The issue was dropped as the administrators and district representatives attempted to move on from parents’ pushback for answers.

“Dozens of us have experienced Caleb’s poor leadership that has a very defensive style which leads people to be afraid to communicate about it because they fear it will negatively impact their children,” Marsh’s email continues.

“Staff are afraid to speak because they don’t want to lose their jobs or suffer added workplace tension.” Marsh’s words echo similar sentiments made by other parents during both meetings, which were voiced along with requests for the district to release an anonymous online survey, and to record the community meetings and have them available to view online.

“This person was selected with no community input and many unresolved issues that linger and this has gotten to be a very heated situation for our community as you can imagine.

“Some want to sue the district for its negligence around these matters. Some want a formal investigation into Caleb and Robbyn. Some merely want the decision to be revoked and to allow for community input on this MAJOR decision that deeply affects our community.

“And moving forward we would like language written into the framework for our school to have major decisions be made always with community input.

“This was a bad decision that was hastily pushed through with no regard for our community,” Marsh concluded in her email to the District. “Our wonderful neighbors down the hill are great but you are not here daily dealing with the ins-and-outs of our community challenges and should not be making blind decisions on our behalf.

“I have taught my children it’s ok to make mistakes…it’s how they are handled that reflects whether you have integrity or not. This is being handled with no integrity and slapping a bandaid on a bad decision and telling people repeatedly to just hope for the best is a crap plan and just further infuriates people.”

The ongoing process

Currently, the district is moving ahead with its decision to have Melamed oversee both schools and to further support him with a newly added Assistant Principal position at NES, and a temporary Dean position for NMSHS.

Interviews for these positions will be held on April 11 at the BVSD’s Education Center, at 6500 Arapahoe Road in Boulder.

Additionally, a Working Group of administrators, teachers, and parents is being created to assist Melamed in his goal of providing consistency, collaboration, and innovation to Nederland schools.

If you’re interested in joining the group, fill out the application at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScAZdNvbNE0cZUgIoCmeOWkLJQ7OkJuF01L55XJMIi29MJ3OQ/viewform.

Correction:

The Boulder Valley School District has requested that we revise a data point we made in the article "BVSD meets with parents: Part 2” from the April 10, 2025, issue of The Mountain-Ear.Their approved wording: 86% of all BVSD class of 2024 graduates achieved in Grad+ by earning College Credit, an Industry Certification, or the Seal of Biliteracy, or by completing a Work-Based Learning experience.