The Roaring Fork Schools is delighted to welcome students, staff, families, and community partners to the 2024/2025 school year. We have a big year ahead as we launch our new five-year strategic plan: placing students first, ensuring rigorous instruction for all, strengthening operational excellence, investing in student-centered partnerships and supporting a thriving team. 

During the first few weeks of school, we are focusing on connection, relationships and routines. We want to make sure students are seen, valued and challenged to engage — right from the start. During freshman orientation at Roaring Fork High School, staff and upperclassmen welcomed new ninth graders with a celebratory “tunnel of love.” Glenwood Springs High School sent students and teachers on adventures like white water rafting, soaking in the Glenwood Hot Springs, and taking in the thrills at the Adventure Park. Bridges High School students went hiking, and Basalt High School athletes revisited their elementary school to celebrate kindergarteners on their first day as Longhorns. And, for the first time in Roaring Fork Schools’ history, we welcomed a small group of students from the class of 2043 in new early childhood infant classrooms. 

In schools, students are settling (back) into classroom routines: they kick off each class period with a “do now” activity — a focusing task that begins the moment the bell rings to help students connect with content, identify learning targets, and activate their brains for learning. Students are becoming familiar with classroom resources, they are working in small and large groups, and making connections with each other and course content. Over the next few weeks, students will complete NWEA testing in math and reading — short, targeted assessments that we administer throughout the year to monitor student achievement and growth. With only 173 student contact days, we must make every moment count. 

Our five-year strategic plan has bold goals to eliminate the opportunity and achievement gap between our white students and students of color, and advance all students’ academic growth, achievement, and wellbeing. We have identified five priorities (students first, rigorous learning for all, operational excellence, student-centered partnerships, thriving team) and developed initiatives that we’ll launch, monitor, refine, and report on to ensure that we are moving in the right direction to strengthen student achievement. But none of those initiatives or investments will work without one critical factor: student attendance. In order to meet our goals, we need students in school, on time, every day. 

In the 2023/2024 school year, Roaring Fork Schools developed a student attendance plan that involves multidisciplinary teams working together to partner with families, communicate, monitor, and intervene to support student attendance. Results from last year are promising; students, families, partners, and staff improved our attendance rate to 92% from 90.9% in 2022/2023, and reduced the percentage of chronically absent students (absent > 10% of total school days, > 2 days/month) from 33.9% to 26.8%. For both indicators, we performed slightly better than the state average. Although these are small shifts, they are the result of dedicated work from students, families, partners and staff to:

• Communicate clear expectations for student attendance;
• Celebrate the vast majority of RFSD students who attend school on time, every single day;
• Provide accurate and responsive attendance reporting to families to ensure student safety;
• Strengthen school and district data management to enable better monitoring and tracking;
• Communicate proactively with students and families when attendance issues arise;
• And, if issues do arise, work closely with students and families to identify root causes and connect with resources and support.

Research shows that students who attend school regularly achieve at higher levels than those who do not. Patterns of achievement related to strong attendance are identifiable even at the earliest grade levels. For this reason, we have the same expectations of on time, every day attendance for preschool students as we do for seniors. Any absence (excused or not) denies students the opportunity to learn in alignment with the school’s instructional program. It makes it more difficult for students to build relationships with peers and faculty, and more difficult to cultivate a sense of belonging. It limits the time faculty have to understand students’ strengths and struggles. It interrupts the academic, social, and emotional learning process for students and their classmates. Importantly, most RFSD families understand this and ensure the students are on time, in school, every day. 

RFSD has invested in incredibly talented teachers, administrators, family liaisons, and front office team members who are trained and committed to strengthening student attendance. They are eager to work with students and families to build good habits, eliminate barriers to consistent attendance, and help students and families connect with resources to ensure they thrive. 

As we settle into the routines and rigors of the school year, it is essential the Roaring Fork Schools community establishes strong habits of consistent student attendance. In order to do the difficult and essential work of raising student achievement and growth, all students need to be present, engaged, and ready to learn every day.

Dr. Anna Cole is superintendent of the Roaring Fork District Schools in Glenwood Springs, Carbondale and Basalt.