RE-1 Valley School District's gifted education program is seeing growth and making great strides as evidenced by a recent audit report by the state Gifted Education Monitoring team. Aubree Ross, RE-1's gifted and talented coordinator, shared highlights of the report Monday at a school board meeting.
The GEM team conducts an audit of districts every five years. This year's audit took place on Dec. 3-6 and included listening sessions with parents, teachers, administrators and students.
The audit report notes that during the last audit in 2018, there were three areas found out of compliance - identification, Advanced Learning Plan and programming. During this year's visit, all areas within the Exceptional Children's Educational Act rule were found to be in compliance.
RE-1 was congratulated in the report for seeing an impressive increase in gifted student identification from 46 students to 77 in less than two years.
"Throughout our monitoring process, the perception of many stakeholders is that the gifted program from a few years ago had essentially been discontinued and was greatly missed. The passion and commitment shown by Aubree in meeting the needs of gifted learners is evident and gifted education is successfully re-emerging in the district," the report states, adding "We have seen a lot of growth of the gifted program since the last C-GER (Colorado Gifted Education Review) and it is a direct result of the vision and advocacy of Aubree which is supported by the leadership of RE-1 Valley."
In their listening sessions, the team found that gifted students enjoyed many of the programming options available in RE-1 such as Battle of the Books, Beat Academy, concurrent enrollment opportunities, course acceleration, internships, a math and science competition through Northeastern Junior College, access to infusion courses, Ultimate summits, exploratory learning at Sterling Middle School and SmartLabs.
The team also made several recommendations including using cluster grouping, which allows gifted students to not only spend time with like-minded peers on a regular basis but to be grouped with other gifted students in their classes either during group work or via scheduling. Other suggestions included offering high school credit to middle school students who take high school math courses, specifically Algebra I and offering an accelerated English language arts pathway in the middle school that articulates to high school, similar to math.
Additionally, the team noted that there appears to be a disconnect between teachers and families when it comes to the roles and responsibilities of communication regarding gifted students. Considering the identification of gifted students is increasing, the team recommended that the district continue to develop and expand the role of gifted coordinators located at the site level, especially at the secondary level, to provide more direct support to gifted learners and families. They also recommended embedding gifted education in Northeast Colorado BOCES and RE-1 Valley joint professional development days.
In other business, the board approved Caliche Elementary's Unified Improvement Plan, which was required after the school was given a turnaround plan rating on this year's school performance framework, earning a score of 29.1% out of 100. School and district frameworks are calculated by combining student academic growth, students' academic achievement and postsecondary and workforce readiness data such as graduation, dropout, and college matriculation rates.
According to Principal Joe Vergilio, the plan was a collective work with help from Colorado Department of Education representatives assisting school staff in examining data, instruction and curriculum, and student needs and in determining the challenges the school is facing.
"We know that our teachers are working really, really hard. They're teaching the curriculum with fidelity," Vergilio said.
One of the things they found is that teachers need to work on data-driven instruction, which some are good at and others are learning and getting better at with the help of Ross. The school is also learning about trauma-informed practices because its student population has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic, "we're seeing more kids that are homeless, they have food insecurities, they have mental health concerns and they're coming to us with trauma," Vergilio said.
He pointed out that all teachers have tools in their "toolbox" to help them address student needs and those who have been in education a long time have many tools. But as the school is seeing more and more students with trauma even veteran teachers are struggling with those students.
So far this year, the school has increased data meetings, they are doing the MTSS (multi-tiered system of supports) with fidelity and Vergilio and Assistant Principal Jamie Johnstone are in classrooms as much as possible using the Bullseye tool to help with teacher observation, so they provide immediate feedback to teachers based on what they're seeing and what the teacher's goals are. The elementary school has also implemented Sources of Strength with the help of their social-emotional learning specialist Timmarie Orin, who is also a social worker and got a grant to put SOS into place.
"So, we've put a lot of things in place to try to address the issues. We've got a ways to go and we know that but we're really excited about the direction," Vergilio said.
Earlier in the meeting, Vergilio reported that all POST (Peace Officer Standards and Training) certified members of the Caliche Safety Team have completed the FASTER (Faculty/Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response) Level II training, which consisted of handling a firearm and engaging a suspect from various shooting positions while utilizing different forms of cover. It also included accurate shooting from a distance, practice clearing rooms in teams of two, three and more, and three active shooter simulations conducted at a more advanced level than FASTER I. FASTER Level II concluded with the POST Certification test.
During his superintendent's report, Dr. Martin Foster addressed a glitch with LifeSpot, the safety app that the district uses, that occurred Thursday, Dec. 12 when a report of a threat went out that was unfounded. The problem was nationwide on the app itself. Afterward, district officials met with Sterling Police Department representatives to discuss what happened and what they will do if it happens again.
He also shared that he will be putting a district calendar committee together after Christmas break and hopes to have a calendar recommendation for next year to the board by their Feb. 18 meeting.
Assistant Superintendent Brenda Kloberdanz reported the district is looking at replacing apps such as ClassDojo and Remind that are used by teachers and coaches to communicate with parents and students with an all-encompassing app, Rooms, from Apptegy, the company that RE-1 uses for its website. The cost would be lower than what the district pays for the Remind app. Kloberdanz said they are looking at a soft start this spring before implementation next fall.