With 12 Ortega Middle School teachers scheduled to be out Friday, administrators of the Alamosa School District suddenly had to weigh their last-resort option: closing school. Assistant Superintendent Luis Murillo and his team “briefly” considered the idea, but instead scrambled to find staff to help cover classrooms, drafting Alamosa Online School employees — including the […]
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Posted inColoradans, COVID, Education, News
Colorado school districts look toward summer to help their students make up for coronavirus learning loss
Though many Colorado students still have at least 100 days left before they reach the end of the academic year, many school district leaders and education advocates are already focused on what comes next. In a year when learning has become routinely unpredictable, with kids zooming back and forth between in-person instruction and remote classes, […]
Posted inBusiness, Economy, Education, News
Students disappeared from classes when they lost internet. A rural Colorado school district’s creativity got them back online.
Marsha Cody calls it a “Christmas miracle.” Two days before Christmas, she got a call from Ciello, one of the local internet providers in the San Luis Valley. As the interim superintendent of the Alamosa School District, Cody was stumped about what to do as several students seemed to disappear each week. They no longer […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Education, News
Thousands of families redshirted their preschoolers and kindergarteners. Will they swell Colorado schools next fall?
Alamosa School District classrooms are typically full, with about 200 kindergarteners each school year. But that number dropped to 142 this fall. Many of Colorado’s 178 school districts saw a similar enrollment dip. The kindergarten count statewide dropped 8.5% this school year, meaning that thousands of kids who were on track to start kindergarten this […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Education, News
Rural Colorado communities vow to keep their schools open, even as coronavirus cases rise
ALAMOSA — Many of Sanford School District 6J’s 355 students have boomeranged between classes at school and home this fall, shuffled out of classrooms like their peers across the state because of a sudden need to quarantine. But the district is taking a stand as it rides out the last few weeks of the first […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Education, News
Colorado’s substitute teacher shortage, worsened by coronavirus, could force some schools to close. Again.
Alamosa School District is so short on educators that all it might take is the quarantine of a single class to leave many kids without a teacher. That’s largely because the southern Colorado district of 2,178 students is battling a significant K-12 substitute teacher shortage. Coronavirus fears have chased a large percentage of the sub […]