Now, he can have this dance
Policy change allows charter students to join homecoming celebration
Animas High School student and Durango High School Demons football player David Etz listens to the national anthem before this year’s homecoming game. After being denied entry to last year’s homecoming dance, Etz, a charter school student, attended the dance for the first time this year.
By Chase Olivarius-Mcallister Herald staff writer
For high school boys, dances can provoke great, if unacknowledged, anxieties.
According to received wisdom, the terrifying questions such dances elicit – “Who will I dance with? Will Hannah Abbot laugh if I ask her?” – are usually easier for football players to answer.
This proved untrue last year, when 14-year-old David Etz, a freshman playing on the Durango High School football team, tried to go to the DHS homecoming dance.
Though Etz’s coach had told the team that all players were welcome, when Etz went to buy a ticket, he was rebuffed: He was enrolled at Animas High School, a charter school with few extracurricular activities, and therefore couldn’t attend.
“I felt excluded,” David said.
According to Executive Director Michael Ackerman, about 42 AHS students go to DHS to participate in extracurricular activities.
“It runs the gamut from sports to orchestra to theater, but the largest majority is athletics,” he said.
Instead of celebrating DHS’s game with his teammates, indulging in punch and awkwardly contemplating how best to talk to the fairer sex, David spent last year’s homecoming on his friend Lathan’s couch, playing X-Box as his teammates danced.
David’s father, Ron Etz, was outraged, and demanded a meeting with Durango School District 9-R Superintendent Daniel Snowberger.
“They were invited by their football coach last year – ‘Hey, all you Animas guys, don’t forget about this homecoming stuff.’ And Animas kids, DHS kids, these kids are a team,” Ron Etz said in a phone interview this week. “The coaches preach ‘family,’ preach ‘team.’ I’ve been bringing these kids to 6.30 a.m. workouts all summer long. I love high school sports, and I support them as much as I can.”
Etz said the issue of Animas students attending homecoming boiled down to a question of equality.
“Are they Durango Demons or not? The bottom line for me really is, is this Mississippi in the ’60s or are we really as liberal and progressive and love everybody as we say we are? Or are we really just (angry) at kids from Animas High?”
At Ron Etz’s meeting last year with Snowberger, Etz said Snowberger assured him the district’s policy would change: the walls were coming down between the district and Animas High School, a charter school.
But when David Etz tried to get a ticket for this year’s homecoming, he was again unwelcome.
He was told he could attend homecoming – but only as the guest of a DHS student, and “we were supposed to have signed up by Sept. 27” a date that had passed 11 days before. “But there was no word of that, no one said anything,” David said.
Ron Etz emailed Snowberger, saying “What happened to ‘the walls between Animas High and 9R coming down’?”
During a spirited and extensive correspondence, Snowberger at one point responded saying, “I am human and this issue snuck up on me.”
Snowberger arranged for a last-minute policy change, whereby David Etz, along with other Animas High School students who play for DHS’s football team, were allowed to attend the DHS homecoming dance.
Jake Lauer, head of school Animas High School, said DHS Principal Leanne Garcia “has actually been fantastic working with us. With this particular situation, she has really gone above and beyond to figure out a way for our students to attend that dance,” he said.
By the standards of high school dances – with Carrie’s pigs’ blood drenched prom and the ensuing homicidal telekinesis being the gold standard – the night was a smashing success.
David said he wore “nice jeans, a button-up gold/tan shirt and a tie that was white and golden brown striped.”
“I danced with one girl. Otherwise, I just did my own little weird dance or hung out with friends. It was just a fun experience, and I wanted to try going to a dance that wasn’t right after or during school – like in the middle school.”
A paragon of adult sophistication, this year’s homecoming dance began at 8 p.m. and went till 11.
Julie Popp said under Snowberger, the district’s new policy was that any Durango student can attend school-district events as long as they are in good standing and have written permission – no matter where they go to school.
Ackerman said he was grateful for Snowberger’s commitment to Animas High School kids.
“Animas does not have a homecoming, nor do we have cheerleaders – we don’t have any of the normal trappings of high school,” he said.
Ackerman said though there has been some animosity between DHS and AHS in previous years, but that’s firmly in the past.
“There may still be some tension at the building level, but I have complete trust in what Dan is saying. I mean, Dan has proven to be nothing but a man of his word and genuine in everything he’s offered to Animas High, and the proof is in the pudding. We have AHS students representing DHS on the football pitch, thespians, musicians,” he said.
