Morgan County School District Re-3: Board of Education hears from FMHS administration

The Morgan County School District Re-3 Board of Education held its regular meeting on Monday, Oct. 18.

Special Presentation

The Board invited the Fort Morgan High School Administrative Team, consisting of Principal Clint Anderson, Assistant Principals Jaylyn Holzworth and Adrianna Nickell and Assistant Principal and Athletic and Activities Director Andy Schon, to give a special presentation highlighting FMHS goals.

Anderson first shared the staff motto for the year: “Brick by brick.”

“One brick by itself isn’t very strong, but whenever all 100 employees get together and bring our bricks together, we have a solid foundation. So each layer, each year, we’re going to get stronger and stronger until we can build a really strong foundation and a great high school,” said Anderson.

The FMHS principal also spoke about implementing common assessments in order to see what is working well and where improvements are needed. This step is following the previous year’s focus on curriculum maps. The goal of the common assessments is to make sure all students taking the same class with different teachers are learning the same thing.

Holzworth spoke to the Board about Freshman Academy, a program introduced to FMHS in 2012 with the intention of helping eighth-grade students easily transition into their freshman year and provide a higher chance of them graduating from high school. (Forty-six high schools in Colorado started implementing their own Freshman Academy programs in the last three years, so FMHS is ahead of the game.)

The two Freshman Academy teams at FMHS are made up of eight teachers in total, including administrator Holzworth, two counselors and a ninth-grade special education teacher. The teams meet every Tuesday with the first-quarter goal of showing students support.

The FMHS graduation rate raised from 72% in 2013 to 85% in 2019. As of 2021, 95% of freshman are currently on track to graduate.

Schon, as the Athletic Director, shared his initial worries surrounding COVID-19 restrictions and cancelations, but luckily the season has been going smoothly so far with only a few cancelations from opposing teams. As fall sports wrap up in anticipation of winter sports, Schon recapped the fall season.

This year, FMHS hosted the Cross Country League Championship on Oct. 13. The FMHS cross country team will be competing in Regionals on Thursday, Oct. 21.

Gymnastics, Cheerleading and Boys Soccer will all wrap up their season by participating in their respective League Championships throughout the next few weeks.

Football is currently in the top five in RPI and in the Rankings and will be playing Roosevelt High School this Friday, Oct. 22, which is also Military and First Responders Appreciation Night at Legion Field.

Nickell spoke last about how restorative discipline is being implemented at FMHS. Teachers are able to fill out a Google Form with the student’s grade, name and a description of the incident in need of disciplinary action. That form is then sent to the administrative team, school counselors and some secretaries in order to provide proper disciplinary measures for each situation.

Nickell was inspired to try out restorative discipline after attending a Colorado Association of School Executives workshop session over the summer.

“This was something that had been on my mind. It was a buzz word, but I didn’t really know much about it. I just knew I wanted to learn more about how to discipline students effectively and in a way that supports them and helps them start changing behaviors,” said Nickell. “It does make a conversation with a student take a little longer, but I’m finding that the conversations are good. I’m able to learn more about the student. I’m able to better get to the root of what’s happening with the behavior and the functions behind the behavior… it’s proving successful so far.”

The information from the CACE session was based off of a book called “Don’t Suspend Me! An Alternative Discipline Toolkit,” which focused on discipline being restorative, reflective and instructional.

Based off of those three points, FMHS has begun implementing actions to help students restore relationships with those involved in the conflict, reflect on the decisions made leading up to the behavior, and turn the situation into a learning opportunity.

Nickell also spoke about student supports. Due to the number of newcomers in the English Language Development (ELD) Department and the lack of bilingual paraprofessionals, the school has introduced six mature and bilingual upperclassmen, “Language Peers,” to help with language translation in ELD classes.

Anderson concluded the presentation by telling the Board about “Senior Summit,” a program through the counseling office that has been made available to seniors on early release Wednesdays from 1:15 to 3:15 p.m. where they can receive one-on-one help with college and scholarship applications.

At the next school board meeting on Nov. 1, the next special presentation will be given by Columbine Elementary.

Reports

FMHS Student Representative Alex Rivas joined the Board for this meeting to give an update on high school events. FMHS recently finished up parent-teacher conferences and had its fall break. Rivas gave everyone an update on FMHS athletics and made the Board aware of the upcoming “Haunted Hallways” event, which will take place on Oct. 30 from 5 to 8 p.m. Students involved in FMHS clubs will have decorated each hallway with either scary or non-scary Halloween decorations to make sure it is fun for all ages to walk through the hallways and trick-or-treat.

Superintendent Dr. Randy Miller mentioned two bids he is deciding between for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) III fund and plans to have that decision made and added as an approval item at the next school board meeting.

Dr. Miller also recognized Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Assessment Dr. Rena Frasco’s hard work during the previous week’s teacher in-service professional development day, where she set up breakout sessions for the staff. Dr. Miller was very impressed by the presentations made by the staff during those sessions.

Frasco was sick and unable to attend the school board meeting, but left the following note about the teacher in-service day: “Our district professional development on Oct. 14 was great! We had 35 district employees present at a variety of breakout sessions and had great feedback from teachers. We spent the afternoon in content work across PK-12. Elementary folks focused on math as it is the curriculum adoption year for math. There were great outcomes for curriculum alignment.”

Frasco also met with Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser last week, who is “interested in Fort Morgan’s diversity and in helping the school district collaborate with the community.”

Chief Financial Officer Toni Miller discussed the district’s pupil count and how the preliminary budget made by former CFO Mike Lee was thankfully conservative.

“The preliminary budget versus the actual count… it’s up 96.5 pupils, so that will take us from a deficit budget to break even or maybe higher. That is just really exciting, especially for my first year, not to be facing a huge deficit,” said Miller.

CFO Miller plans to have financial statements ready for the Board at the next meeting.

Human Resources Director Dr. Brian Childress echoed the praise for the success of the Oct. 14 in-service day. He also let the school board know that he, along with Principal Anderson, would be attending the University of Northern Colorado’s Mid-Semester Career & Internship Fair on Tuesday, Oct. 26, in hopes of finding someone to fill psychologist, social worker, special education and Language Arts positions in the District.

Discussion Item

A policy reading from Sept. 30, 2021 was reviewed by the Board for the first time.

Action Items

The Board approved the 2021-2022 Unified Improvement Plans (UIPs) for submission to the Colorado Department of Education.

Three different donations to Fort Morgan Middle School — a $900 donation from Rattlers Athletics, a $1,100 donation from Fort Morgan Wrestling Club and a $500 donation from Marcy J. Stark/ Cargill Meat Solution — were also approved.

Advanced Planning

The Colorado Association of School Boards’ (CASB) Fall Conference and Delegate Assembly will be held on Oct. 22-23 in Fort Collins.

The next two Board meetings will be held on Nov. 1 and 15.