Echoes from Cañon
Examples of Excellence
While on a visit to St. Thomas Moore Hospital, Cañon City Middle School students learn how a medical lab is operated.
Over the next several weeks I'll be sharing the good work going on at each of our district schools. I'll start this week by highlighting wonderful progress being made at Cañon City Middle School.
Cañon City Middle School wrapped up 2017-18 by achieving a Performance accreditation rating (the highest a Colorado school can receive) thanks to exceptional growth in Langauge Arts and Math assessments.
The Falcon staff is not only focusing on increased academic achievement. Student behavior is improving measurably thanks to their SOAR incentive program. Children explore careers thanks to technology coding, building trades, and performing and visual art classes offered through a strong life skills program. Add student field trips to college campuses, an active career exploration partnership with St. Thomas Moore Hospital, and a staff with a growth mindset committed to increasing student engagement in learning, and it's easy to see how CCMS achieved a rating of 8 out of 10 on its annual district program evaluation.
CCMS Principal Tim Renn says the staff's areas of refinement include expanding staff knowledge and ability to engage students in learning through Socratic seminars, project-based learning activities, debate, presentation, cooperative learning, and technology assisted instruction. Another focus will be to improve academic interventions for students struggling in any core subject they may struggle and to grow staff in using achievement data to drive instructional decisions.
Another area of note is the work being done on behalf of students with mild to moderate special education needs at CCMS. The staff is exhibiting good growth in reading at all three grade levels while providing effective behavioral and academic interventions to students in their least restrictive learning environment.
Cañon City Middle School wrapped up 2017-18 by achieving a Performance accreditation rating (the highest a Colorado school can receive) thanks to exceptional growth in Langauge Arts and Math assessments.
The Falcon staff is not only focusing on increased academic achievement. Student behavior is improving measurably thanks to their SOAR incentive program. Children explore careers thanks to technology coding, building trades, and performing and visual art classes offered through a strong life skills program. Add student field trips to college campuses, an active career exploration partnership with St. Thomas Moore Hospital, and a staff with a growth mindset committed to increasing student engagement in learning, and it's easy to see how CCMS achieved a rating of 8 out of 10 on its annual district program evaluation.
CCMS Principal Tim Renn says the staff's areas of refinement include expanding staff knowledge and ability to engage students in learning through Socratic seminars, project-based learning activities, debate, presentation, cooperative learning, and technology assisted instruction. Another focus will be to improve academic interventions for students struggling in any core subject they may struggle and to grow staff in using achievement data to drive instructional decisions.
Another area of note is the work being done on behalf of students with mild to moderate special education needs at CCMS. The staff is exhibiting good growth in reading at all three grade levels while providing effective behavioral and academic interventions to students in their least restrictive learning environment.
CCMS students participate in one of several college campus visits.
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CCMS teachers continually hone their instructional skills through peer observation.
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The Focus of Our Work
Structural issues, plumbing leaks, bathrooms that don't meet ADA standards, and inefficient learning environments are some of the issues we are hoping to address through the BEST grant process at Washington and CCMS.
Summer is in full swing. However, our building leaders are still hard at work filling key positions for the coming school year. A glance at the job board at 101 North 14th Street shows we still need elementary classroom teachers, a middle school counselor, a speech language pathologist, an elementary music teacher, a middle school special education teacher, and a high school family and consumer sciences instructor. If you know anyone who would serve our children well in one of these positions, please send them our way.
At our board work session and meeting on June 26th, we'll review and hopefully adopt proposed high school graduation requirements for the class of 2021. We must change ours to align with new Colorado State Board of Education requirements. Fortunately Canon City High School principal Bill Summers has been working all year with his staff and the Canon 2020 Committee to prepare recommendations.
As part of our year-long review, we will also accept for first reading updates to 36 policies surrounding employee/district relations.
Another task we're addressing is how to respond to Colorado's Building Excellent Schools Today board's decision not to fund our Canon City Middle School/Washington Elementary School building replacement grant application. In May we were awarded a $5 million grant to make upgrades to roofs, safety and security systems, and learning environments of five schools. However, we're still seeking funding streams to attend to needs at Washington and CCMS. Our current plan is to separate the Washington grant application from the CCMS ask while seeking a solution that might be more attractive to the BEST board for our aged middle school. Doing this work well will mean securing funding to cover 65% of costs to replace or upgrade these two valued facilities.
On a final note, director of instruction Adam Hartman and I continue to plug away on our annual federal programs application. Fortunately, because of changes to federal law, our deadline has been extended July 15th. Our greatest struggle has been addressing a $100,000 Title I funding cut. Unfortunately, we received notification of this only two weeks ago. Fortunately, Mr. Hartman and all our directors have performed some amazing budget troubleshooting and we are honing in on a viable solution.
At our board work session and meeting on June 26th, we'll review and hopefully adopt proposed high school graduation requirements for the class of 2021. We must change ours to align with new Colorado State Board of Education requirements. Fortunately Canon City High School principal Bill Summers has been working all year with his staff and the Canon 2020 Committee to prepare recommendations.
As part of our year-long review, we will also accept for first reading updates to 36 policies surrounding employee/district relations.
Another task we're addressing is how to respond to Colorado's Building Excellent Schools Today board's decision not to fund our Canon City Middle School/Washington Elementary School building replacement grant application. In May we were awarded a $5 million grant to make upgrades to roofs, safety and security systems, and learning environments of five schools. However, we're still seeking funding streams to attend to needs at Washington and CCMS. Our current plan is to separate the Washington grant application from the CCMS ask while seeking a solution that might be more attractive to the BEST board for our aged middle school. Doing this work well will mean securing funding to cover 65% of costs to replace or upgrade these two valued facilities.
On a final note, director of instruction Adam Hartman and I continue to plug away on our annual federal programs application. Fortunately, because of changes to federal law, our deadline has been extended July 15th. Our greatest struggle has been addressing a $100,000 Title I funding cut. Unfortunately, we received notification of this only two weeks ago. Fortunately, Mr. Hartman and all our directors have performed some amazing budget troubleshooting and we are honing in on a viable solution.
Last Week
Last week I worked on our federal programs grant application, on possible solutions to our facilities issues at Cañon City Middle School, and on evaluations of some of the folks I supervise. I attended meetings with my Superintendent Advisory Council, leaders at Southern Peaks Learning Center regarding how to allocate shared Title ID funds, with director of special services Lynnette Steinhoff about general special education matters, with PCC Fremont Campus leaders about a possible partnership on a P-Tech grant, with Lincoln School of Science and Technology Principal Tammy DeWolfe to go over her annual academic improvement plan, with the Early Childhood Leadership Commission in Denver, and with our Fremont Facilities Corporation board of directors.
This Week
This is what Cañon City Middle School's Performance accreditation rating looks like on paper. Considering their 2014 result labeled them a Priority Improvement school, progress being made by staff and students has been phenomenal!
This week I'll continue work on our federal programs application, attend a regular board of education work session and meeting, a Superintendent's Advisory Council meeting, and several legislative advocacy meetings in Springs and Denver. I’ll also take a few days off to spend time with family.
Thanks for listening once again.
George S. Welsh
Thanks for listening once again.
George S. Welsh