Join 9-R Board of Education members Wednesday, June 16, 2021, from 12-1pm, to have an informal conversation about how everything is going for you and your student. The meeting will be on Zoom, and a live interpreter will be available.

We are committed to sharing our student achievement data with transparency. We recognize the incredible effort put forth by our staff this year and are grateful for their perseverance and flexibility. Yet, our end-of-year assessment data tells us that our students need intentional and unified support to ensure that the impacts of the pandemic are not long-lasting and far-reaching in our students' literacy and math skills. We are working with great urgency to turn around our historical trend of under-serving portions of our community and to minimize the impact of disrupted learning COVID-19 has had on all of our learners.

Congratulations 9-R families, students and staff… we made it! This was a year for the books and certainly created many new memories. While it wasn’t a typical school year for any of us, learning to live with masks, quarantines, and ever-changing school schedules it was still an amazing school year and we have so much to celebrate and be grateful for.

Manna bags with nonperishable foods will be available outside of Needham Elementary, Animas Valley Elementary, Florida Mesa Elementary and at the front doors of the Administration building starting 6/10 and 6/11. Bags will be available Thursday and Friday of each week.

Durango School District 9-R recognizes the opportunity gaps that COVID has created for our learners. This summer, we are creating a summer learning program for students in Kindergarten-5th grade who have experienced a loss of access to instruction that has resulted in below grade-level math and reading achievement.

District leaders have recently received recommendations from three work groups: The Culture and Equity Design Team, the Significant Disproportionality Work Group, and the Native American Parental Advisory Committee. Their recommendations will guide the district in strategic planning to continue addressing concerns of inequity within our system.

Governor Polis recently issued new guidance on the use of masks. Schools and child care centers are required to continue the use of masks as a mitigation effort against COVID-19 until June 1, 2021. Recognizing, the last day of school is June 3, 2021 (with no school in session on June 2, 2021 as it is a remote learning day), there will be no changes to our mask requirements for this school year.

Durango 9-R's Shared School program is currently taking students for the 2021-2022 school year. The Shared School program is designed for homeschool families and offers classes such as art, music, drama, PE, yoga, Spanish and homeroom enrichment.

The Community Foundation Serving Southwest Colorado (SWCF) has a long-standing commitment from donors for educational opportunities in the region. In the past 10 years, total donations from one anonymous family for Durango School District 9-R (9-R) through the SWCF have now reached $2M, with the most recent donation of $200,000 to support the future Career Technical Education (CTE) Building that is being funded by the recent 4A Bond dollars.

The Board of Education and Bond Oversight Committee are seeking community feedback regarding sustainability related to capital projects and our new bond. Listening sessions will be held on June 1st and 2nd to get further clarification on thoughts, concepts, ideas, and definitions surrounding sustainability and how the bond program could best address those.