Organization Spotlight

D20 Superintendent Search: What Parents Should Know About CLAS and Dan Snowberger

The D20 superintendent search should include clear answers about CLAS, Dan Snowberger, Elizabeth book-ban litigation, Brad Miller-linked legal context, candidate disclosure, and overlapping leadership timelines.

Last updated May 22, 2026

Dan Snowberger, Elizabeth School District superintendent and CLAS executive director.

The D20 superintendent search is not just a personnel story. It is a governance test.

Academy District 20 is moving through a sudden superintendent transition after a May 2026 employment action involving Superintendent Jinger Haberer and local reporting that Dr. Susan Field was appointed interim superintendent for the 2026-2027 school year. The district’s retained board-material record shows a May 14 agenda item on superintendent contract and employment matters and a May 19 agenda item to appoint an acting superintendent. For the public chronology, see KRDO’s May 19 report and The Gazette’s May 15 report.

That means D20 families, teachers, staff, taxpayers, and voters should watch the next phase closely. The permanent superintendent will shape curriculum, staffing, school safety, budgets, legal risk, board relations, and the public direction of one of the Pikes Peak region’s most visible school districts.

That is why Colorado Leaders for Academic Success, known as CLAS, deserves attention now. Not because the available record proves CLAS controls or directs anything in D20. It does not. The point is narrower and more practical. A superintendent search is exactly when outside affiliations should be disclosed before they become a trust problem.

What is CLAS?

CLAS, Colorado Leaders for Academic Success, is a Colorado nonprofit school-board support organization. A Colorado Secretary of State filing shows the organization was formed on December 1, 2023. That same formation filing lists Cortney Salt, spouse of former D20 board member Aaron Salt, as incorporator and registered agent. It also lists Joshua Miller, at a Vessey Road address later tied in retained source work to Miller Farmer Law, as the person who caused the document to be delivered for filing. Those are formation facts. They do not, by themselves, prove later control, funding, representation, policy authorship, or district influence.

A later 2026 periodic report places Daniel Joseph Snowberger in the current registered-agent record. That matters because Snowberger is also listed by current CLAS source material as executive director and by Elizabeth School District as its superintendent.

The executive-director history is part of the transparency story. Chalkbeat reported that Cortney Salt was CLAS’s original executive director and that Snowberger took the helm after CLAS had three executive directors in roughly its first year and a half. The retained SOS records directly support Salt’s formation and registered-agent roles. They do not independently establish her exact executive-director dates. That is the kind of distinction that keeps the record honest.

CLAS describes itself as an organization focused on school-board governance, academic achievement, local control, parental rights, professional development, communications, policy support, legislative outreach, and networking. Those claims come from CLAS itself, including its retained about page, membership page, and leadership page. They are useful because they show what CLAS says it offers. They do not, by themselves, prove services were delivered to D20.

The membership capture describes individual and board or organization membership options. It also describes support for board-superintendent relationships, Robert’s Rules, academic achievement, local control, parental rights, communications, and policy support. It says members receive monthly communication and resources from the National School Boards for Academic Excellence, or SBAE. CLAS source material also lists SBAE executive director David Hoyt as a policy-summit speaker. Chalkbeat reported CLAS formed in late 2023 as an affiliate of a national group with a similar mission. The formal affiliation documents are still unresolved, but the public-facing resource and event connections are not imaginary.

That is why the CASB comparison matters. CLAS leaders have resisted the idea that the group is simply a partisan replacement for the Colorado Association of School Boards. But Chalkbeat reported that critics and some supporters described CLAS as a conservative version of CASB, and it quoted local board members describing CASB as having a liberal viewpoint or CLAS as aligned with conservative values. Colorado Public Education Watch, an advocacy/commentary source, has made the same comparison more directly. The careful reading is this: CLAS may describe itself as academic and nonpartisan, but the public debate around it has repeatedly framed it as an alternative to CASB for more conservative school-board politics.

Primary records from other Colorado districts show why this is a legitimate public-transparency issue, while also setting the limits. A District 49 agenda-detail record and attached CLAS presentation show CLAS as a district-facing board-governance and training organization. A District 11 board-packet handout preserves CLAS’s own description of board membership, training, policy support, and member benefits. Delta County Joint District 50J minutes show one district voting to join CLAS for $3,000, while later withdrawal and rejoin records show continued board debate. ERBOCES check registers show payment rows to CLAS. None of those records proves anything about D20. They do show CLAS is not merely a rumor or a campaign talking point.

The broader school-choice network signal

CLAS also sits near a broader Colorado Springs education-reform network that deserves careful, limited description. Chalkbeat reported that Snowberger said CLAS is partially funded by The Schuck Initiatives. Separate retained source work on Parents Challenge shows Mike Miles in the Parents Challenge board/trustee layer by 2023. Miles is a former Harrison School District 2 superintendent, former Dallas ISD superintendent, founder and former CEO of Third Future Schools, and later Houston ISD superintendent.

That connection should not be stretched. The inspected source set does not show Mike Miles has a CLAS role. It does not show Parents Challenge funds, controls, sponsors, or directs CLAS. It does not show Miles has any D20 role. The point is not to collapse every school-choice organization into one command structure. The point is to recognize a recurring policy universe: school-choice philanthropy, charter and turnaround models, board-governance training, parental-rights language, and alternative infrastructure for school-board politics.

That is exactly the kind of universe a superintendent search should make visible. Not because every relationship is improper. Because hidden relationships make ordinary governance look like a locked room.

What the record shows about D20 and CLAS

The available source set does not show that Academy District 20 is a CLAS member. It does not show D20 paid CLAS, approved CLAS membership, received CLAS services, adopted CLAS-provided policy language, or gave CLAS a formal role in the superintendent transition or the eventual permanent search.

One D20 record does create a public disclosure issue. A March 12, 2026 board-meeting caption transcript records Director Eddie Waldrep saying during board comments that he attended a Colorado Leaders for Academic Success conference, described it favorably, and thought the board could benefit from looking at what CLAS offered. Another board voice suggested it could perhaps go to a future study session.

That does not prove district membership. It does not prove reimbursement, sponsorship, coordination, policy adoption, or a superintendent-search role. But it does prove CLAS had entered at least one public D20 board-comment conversation before the superintendent transition. That is enough to make transparency reasonable.

Why the May 20, 2025 Payne interview matters

A separate D20 record adds a more specific disclosure question. The May 20, 2025 D20 special-meeting caption track covers the board vacancy interviews and appointment vote. Susan Payne’s interview begins near 00:02:15. Around 00:13:30, while answering a question about D20’s library-book policy, Payne said she had recently “had the opportunity to visit with the Superintendent from Elizabeth Schools” and described that person as a “friend and colleague.” The same answer referred to what Elizabeth was facing around library books and possible high-court litigation.

The timing matters. This was not a casual hallway comment. It came during the public interview that led to Payne’s appointment to the Board of Education. The later appointment vote begins around 03:14:03, when a board member nominated Payne for appointment and the board voted in favor.

The caption does not name Dan Snowberger. It does not mention CLAS. It does not show what was discussed in Payne’s visit with the Elizabeth superintendent beyond the topic Payne identified in her answer. Those limits matter.

But separate public records complete the narrow identification question. The Elizabeth School District superintendent page identifies Snowberger as superintendent and says he was appointed in March 2023. CLAS source material identifies Snowberger as executive director, including the retained CLASnetwork leadership page. A separate Elizabeth School District contract-extension memo also helps bound the current Elizabeth employment context.

That makes the May 20 record relevant in a precise way. It does not prove CLAS activity inside D20. It does not prove Snowberger influenced D20 policy or the superintendent search. It does show that, before the superintendent transition, the person later appointed to the D20 board publicly cited a recent conversation with the Elizabeth superintendent, described that person as a friend and colleague, and did so in response to a question about library-book policy.

Elizabeth’s book-ban litigation is part of the context

That library-book answer now has sharper context. The ACLU of Colorado’s Crookshanks, et al. v. Elizabeth School District case page says the ACLU sued Elizabeth School District on December 19, 2024, after the district banned and removed at least 19 books from school libraries. The page says the case remains pending, that the federal district court issued a preliminary injunction ordering Elizabeth to return the removed books and barring additional removals based on viewpoint, and that Elizabeth later abandoned its Tenth Circuit appeal in January 2026.

That matters for D20 because Payne’s public interview answer pointed to Elizabeth while the board was weighing her appointment. It does not prove D20 copied Elizabeth policy, that Snowberger advised D20, or that CLAS had a role in D20’s library policy or superintendent search. It does put Elizabeth’s book-removal litigation, parental-rights language, legal risk, and board-governance disputes in the same public context as the D20 appointment record.

The legal-counsel layer is also relevant. In the Tenth Circuit appeal, Elizabeth School District’s counsel block included First & Fourteenth PLLC and Bryce Carlson of Miller Farmer Carlson Law LLC. Separately, Colorado Community Media reported that ESD attorney Brad Miller advised the Elizabeth board at an October 2, 2023 meeting that it could amend agendas and adopt resolutions at regular board meetings; in the open-meetings case, the court was not persuaded by the district’s position. Brad Miller should therefore be treated as part of Elizabeth’s governance and legal context, while the Crookshanks counsel-of-record claim should stay tied to the specific filings that list First & Fourteenth and Bryce Carlson.

Where Dan Snowberger fits now

Dan Snowberger matters here because he sits at the intersection of several public records. He is identified by Elizabeth School District as its superintendent. He is identified by CLAS source material as CLAS’s executive director. He is identified in current Colorado Secretary of State records as CLAS’s registered agent. And, according to a public Elbert County Tribune Facebook post, he announced at a Tuesday night Elizabeth School District special board meeting that he intends to retire at the end of the 2026-2027 school year.

That reported retirement timeline lines up with the school year Dr. Susan Field has reportedly committed to serve as D20’s interim superintendent. It does not make Snowberger a D20 candidate. It does not prove he is available for D20, interested in D20, recruited by D20, or under discussion by D20. It does make the timeline more relevant than it was before.

The inspected sources still do not show Snowberger is seeking the Academy District 20 superintendent job, has applied, has been recruited, has been discussed as a candidate, or has any verified role in the D20 superintendent search.

That is the line the public record supports. It is also the line that should be easy for D20 to clarify. If board members have outside relationships with people who lead school-governance policy organizations, the question is not whether those relationships are automatically improper. The question is whether they are visible before the board makes the most important hire in the district.

What parents should ask before the next hire

The public does not need speculation. It needs direct answers to boring, checkable questions.

Is ASD20 a member of CLAS, or has it considered joining?
Have any D20 board members attended CLAS events, calls, trainings, conferences, or policy briefings?
Were any CLAS-related expenses paid or reimbursed by the district, a campaign, a donor, a nonprofit, a vendor, or an individual board member?
Have any D20 board members, administrators, or search consultants communicated with CLAS about governance, superintendent leadership, policy, library-book policy, candidate recruitment, or board-superintendent relations?
Have any board members had recent conversations with Dan Snowberger or other CLAS leaders about D20 governance, policy, leadership, or superintendent hiring?
Have any board members had contacts with The Schuck Initiatives, Parents Challenge, SBAE, or other school-choice or board-training organizations about the D20 superintendent search?
Will superintendent candidates and board members disclose outside legal-counsel, policy-template, litigation-strategy, or board-governance relationships involving Brad Miller, Miller Farmer Carlson Law, First & Fourteenth, or similar legal and policy networks?
Will superintendent candidates disclose outside leadership roles, policy-network affiliations, consulting work, board-training relationships, charter-sector ties, advocacy-group ties, litigation-connected policy work, and nonprofit board or funder relationships?
Will the public see the criteria used to screen candidates before finalists are selected?

These questions do not accuse anyone of wrongdoing. They ask the district to make the hiring environment visible before a decision is made.

What transparency should look like

Transparency should not be a vague promise issued after the board has already narrowed the field. Before a permanent Academy District 20 superintendent is chosen, the board should publish or clearly explain the search timeline, the role of any search firm, the candidate screening criteria, how staff and families will be heard, and whether finalists must disclose outside board-training, consulting, advocacy, charter, nonprofit, litigation-connected, or policy-network affiliations.

The board should also clarify whether D20 has any CLAS-related records, payments, reimbursements, agendas, correspondence, pending study-session plans, or board-member contacts. If there is no district relationship, the board can say so plainly. If there is one, the public should not have to discover it after the hire.

Source documents uploaded for this article

External reporting and commentary used for context

For the superintendent-transition chronology, this article also relies on public reporting from KRDO, The Gazette, KKTV, and KOAA. For statewide CLAS context, it relies in part on Chalkbeat reporting about CLAS membership claims, criticism, original executive-director reporting, CASB comparisons, Schuck Initiatives funding claims, and Snowberger’s statements. It also uses the ACLU of Colorado Crookshanks case page and linked court filings for Elizabeth book-ban litigation context, Colorado Community Media reporting for the Elizabeth open-meetings and Brad Miller context, a public Elbert County Tribune Facebook post for the reported Snowberger retirement announcement, and Colorado Public Education Watch commentary as an opposition-research lead, not as a standalone factual authority where primary records are available. Copyrighted news and commentary articles are linked as external sources rather than rehosted as documents.

The bottom line

The record does not show that CLAS has a formal role in D20. It does show that CLAS is active in Colorado school-board governance, that a D20 board member publicly raised CLAS in March 2026, that another D20 board member cited a recent conversation with Elizabeth’s superintendent during the interview that led to her appointment, that Elizabeth’s book-removal litigation is directly relevant to that public answer, that Brad Miller belongs in the Elizabeth governance and legal context, and that Snowberger’s reported Elizabeth retirement timeline now overlaps with D20’s interim-superintendent year.

That is enough to ask for disclosure. Not drama. Not rumor. Disclosure.

A superintendent search is where a district shows whether it treats public trust as a process or as a slogan.

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