Mark your calendars for Monday, August 23rd from 8:30-10:00am at Needham for your child to meet their teacher! At this time, we plan for teachers to be set up outside in their daily drop-off/pick-up locations, so that families who are able to attend know where to go on the first day of school. If you're not able to attend, don't worry! We know how busy everyone is with work and commitments. More information will be shared in the weeks ahead.

Some of you may have noticed that Needham doesn’t have a fall check-in date listed on the district website. Rather than asking families to come by on a particular day, please call (970)247-4791 or stop by the Needham Office from 8am-3pm with any questions. At Meet the Teacher (more on this below) or during the first week of school, the office will send home any forms that need to be completed.

As part of the Sustainability Promises by the District, 9-R is looking to create a Sustainability Committee composed of staff, students, parents and local experts.

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.