Starting in the fall, Nederland Elementary and Nederland Middle/Senior High will share a single principal, a decision that took parents by surprise and prompted a request for a community town hall with district leadership.

The Boulder Valley school board on Tuesday approved appointing Caleb Melamed, the principal at Nederland Elementary, to also serve as the principal at Nederland Middle/Senior. He replaces Gavan Goodrich, who is retiring after three years as the principal.

“We’ve really heard loudly about the desire of the community to focus not just on elementary versus secondary experiences for students but on the PK to 12 experience,” Boulder Valley Assistant Superintendent Robbyn Fernandez said. “This is an opportunity for an aligned experience across the buildings and just greater community conversations.”

She said the plan is to hire an assistant principal at the elementary school. The middle/senior will continue to have an assistant principal, maintaining a team of three administrators between the two schools.

With an enrollment of about 200 students at each school, for a total of about 400 students, a shared principal “makes so much sense,” she said.

“We really are looking at this as an opportunity,” she said.

Melamed, who attended Nederland schools and lives in Nederland with his family, said he sees opportunities to expand connections between the two schools. Now, for example, high school mentors students visit fourth graders once a month. Along with building relationships, he said, he wants to focus on making sure students are prepared academically and have smooth transitions to middle and high school.

He said teachers can determine the key characteristics of a Nederland High graduate, then work back all the way to preschool to make sure they’re teaching the skills students will need.

“Having those strong conversations will really benefit all of our students,” he said. “It will really allow us to collaborate to build those systems and structures.”

After learning of the decision Tuesday night, parents raised concerns about the lack of community involvement, calling it a unilateral decision. Nederland parent April Nielsen said she’s deeply frustrated by the lack of explanation of the district’s rationale and is asking for a town hall to allow for dialogue and input.

“Our community already faces challenges in retaining students locally,” she wrote in an email. “Decisions like these, made without community input, risk pushing more families to seek education outside our mountain community, further weakening our schools.”Carrie Howell, who has two middle school daughters at Nederland Middle/Senior and previously worked at the elementary school, said parents were expecting to provide feedback because the district in the past always held a community forum before hiring a new principal.

She added she’s worried Melamed will burn out trying to lead two schools or will be forced to give more responsibilities to teachers, increasing their already heavy workloads and leading to teachers leaving.

“I don’t see how one person could possibly handle all of that,” she said. “It’s very concerning. A principal should not be negotiable. I worry this is going to force more families down the hill (to Boulder schools). If we don’t have a big enough population, will they even keep our schools open?”

Parent Diana Underhill, who represents both of Nederland’s schools on the District Accountability Committee, said she’s disappointed the district didn’t seek more community input, but doesn’t think it’s a bad decision overall. She noted the schools will continue to have three administrators, just with reshuffled job responsibilities.

“Maybe this decision allows the principal more space in their schedule to do some of the strategic planning and advocacy for our mountain schools that they don’t have the capacity to do right now,” she wrote in an email. “We also suffer from high turnover in the administrative positions and have been begging BVSD to make some changes so that administrators stick around longer. Maybe this is their solution?”

Other parents said the decision is a continuation of the district neglecting Nederland schools. While tiny Gold Hill and Jamestown elementary schools share a principal with Boulder’s Flatirons Elementary, Nederland will be the only secondary school with a shared principal.

“It is hard enough for one principal to manage the middle school and the high school given the different priorities and issues that arise across these age groups,” Nederland parent Anne Howarth wrote in an email. “To think that the elementary school principal could be effective across K-12 grades in two buildings that are about one mile apart is at best delusional and at worst a blatant attempt to destroy the schools of Nederland that serve the local community.”

Michael Mannion, who owns a tutoring company, previously worked in Boulder Valley and is the parent of a Nederland Middle/Senior junior, said teaching positions and funding for special education at the two schools have been slowly cut over the past decade, creating understaffed classes and safety issues.

“As a result of the underfunding and understaffing of our schools, our (Nederland Middle/Senior) students are forced to access online or tech classes just to meet credit requirements for graduation,” he wrote in an email. “Now we are faced with the understaffing of the entirety of our mountain community schools.”