So far, the 2024-2025 school year has been absolutely incredible! In addition to the many academic accomplishments of our teachers and schools – here’s a quick look at some celebrations from the first half of this school year.
Student Support Services Center - Parker
In 2024, we opened our new Student Support Services facility in Parker (located at 10235 Parkglenn Way). This building, which we were able to purchase with proceeds from a land sale, enabled us to relocate our Parker Bridge students from a modular classroom facility to a real brick and mortar building which was long overdue. Also at this location is the Parker ChildFind program and the School to Work Alliance Program.
Staff Retention Rates Improve Thanks to 2023 MLO
The Mill Levy Override (MLO) passed by voters in 2023 is having a positive impact! The MLO allowed our school district to increase teacher and staff pay, making it more comparable with pay in our neighboring school districts. As a result, we have seen teacher and staff turnover rates decrease, and morale and job satisfaction
increase. In addition, our school district is seeing more job applications for vacant positions, including for bus drivers. We were able to restore six bus routes (including two in Parker), meaning those routes will no longer have a rotating cancellation week schedule. We are working to train additional drivers to restore even more routes in early 2025!
Safety and Security
Also thanks to the passage of the 2023 Mill Levy Override, DCSD has hired Campus Security Specialists at each of our elementary schools and added additional School Resource Officers at the middle and high school levels. These amazing individuals are making a tremendous impact - not only on safety but also on our students!
Artificial Intelligence Pilot
In order to help us thoroughly understand and research the possibilities of AI in our classrooms, DCSD entered into a partnership with Khan Academy. Khan Academy offers a new AI tool, Khanmigo, built specifically for education. 18 of our schools are participating in a Khanmigo pilot this school year and we are hearing very positive feedback about how the tool is helping our teachers save time (so they have more time to focus on our kids) and assisting students in the learning process with personalized learning (including tutoring!). At the same time, Khanmigo is a perfect springboard for helping our principals, teachers, students and families alike in safely and ethically utilizing AI in a school setting.
Coming in 2025
2024 Bond Next Steps
We have hit the ground running getting ready to spend the 2024 Bond money exactly as intended by voters. You can see estimated completion dates for Bond projects at each of our schools at www.dcsdk12.org/funding. Additional data and information will continue to be added to the funding website so our voters can watch as the money gets spent exactly as promised.
Our Citizens’ Oversight Committee (Mill Bond Oversight Ad-Hoc Committee) is seeing parent representatives from Castle Rock and Parker. Visit our website to learn more and apply (www.dcsdk12.org/funding – go to “Accountability and Transparency”).
Strategic Plan Meetings
We will soon be hosting a series of engagement opportunities for you to contribute to our upcoming strategic planning process. It is always our goal to be the best school district in Colorado and to ensure that our students receive the best public education possible. We hope we can count on you to join us to IMAGINE what we want our school district to look like in 2035 and beyond and DREAM of the possibilities for our students and graduates.
We wish you a very Happy New Year and can’t wait to see what 2025 brings!
Erin Kane is the Superintendent of the Douglas County School District