By NATHAN DEAL Nathan.Deal@gjsentinel.com Aug 23, 2024 Updated Aug 23, 2024  |  Read full story here

Mesa County Valley School District 51 Superintendent Brian Hill provided an update on the start of the school year to the D51 Board of Education at its meeting Tuesday evening at R-5 High School.

Hill went over a variety of statistics on summer programs, new hires and remaining vacancies, maintenance operations and more.

STUDENTS SERVED IN SUMMER

The district saw decent attendance for its summer extended learning opportunities.

From grades K-8, programming had a literacy focus, with 1,034 seats available for students. Of those, 979 seats were registered by the end of May, with 697 students physically attending with a daily average attendance of 609 students.

Credit recovery opportunities were offered at the high school level in 16 subjects, mostly core classes in math, ELA (English language arts), science and social studies. Throughout the district, 395 students attended, with 471 credits recovered.

In addition, from June 10-20 and from July 8-18, Extended School Year (ESY) services, which are special education and related services provided in accordance with each student’s IEP (Individualized Education Program) at no cost to families, were offered. Out of 297 eligible students, 158 students attended ESY sessions.

The district not only served students educationally but also nutritionally. The Lunch Lizard program, which features three different routes and two school sites for mobile food trucks throughout June and July, provided 15,120 lunches to D51 students facing food insecurity.

On top of that, 5,804 breakfasts and 9,354 lunches were served at the district’s summer learning sites.

D51 Nutrition Services received a $150,000 grant from the Western Colorado Community Foundation to fund a new mobile food truck to be added to the Lunch Lizard’s fleet. This truck will be utilized during the school year for a new route serving Grand River Academy, Mesa Valley Community School and Cactus Bloom Montessori. Cactus Bloom has entered a contract with the district to provide approximately 40 meals per day.