Estes Park Schools work to meet district, student needs

Continually declining enrollment that year-by-year decreases funding available to pay both teachers and non-certified staff, the necessity to improve state accreditation ratings, and meeting the goals set by a community strategic planning committee are just a few of the challenges facing the Estes Park school system according to Ruby Bode, superintendent of schools.

While the student population has decreased every year for the past two decades, the loss has been especially drastic since 2019. In Colorado, program funding is based on enrollment. Current school enrollment is calculated at the 2023-2024 level of 950 students, 890 of whom are full time. Enrollment calculations for the current school year will be released by the state in January but Bode already knows the number will be lower again.

“In the past five years, enrollment has decreased over 100 students which equates to a loss of $500,000 $600,000 a year ,” Bode said during recent community round-table discussions sponsored by the League of Women Voters.

Lower funding equates to less money available for programming and salaries.

“I’m really proud to say that while our enrollment has been going down and we’ve lost funding every year, in the last three years since I’ve been superintendent, and with our current school board, we’ve increased the base teacher pay by $7,000. Where a lot of school districts haven’t been able to make it, we are now at a place where we have a higher average salary than Thompson School District, which is probably our biggest competitor.”

First-year teachers earn $48,000 per year plus benefits. The average teacher pay in the Estes Park district is $65,000.

While the district once faced state accreditation challenges, Bode proudly points to a “performance standard” received in the past year, indicating that the schools are meeting expectations on the majority of performance metrics, according to the Colorado Department of Education.

Bode said three specific focus areas noted by the strategic plan were targeted as areas for improvement: reading, behavior, and a family partnership plan.

“We looked at teaching reading and literacy writing as a team approach, rather than just one teacher trying to meet the diverse needs of the students in their class,” Bode said. During a reading hour, English language development teachers work on specific vocabulary and English language acquisition skills with students who are either non-English proficient or limited English proficient, which makes up about 21% of our student population, and 26% in the younger grades, she explained.

“We saw some negative behaviors that used to be rare were almost commonplace, after the year in virtual learning (because of COVID) and just unkindness, and apathy and lack of motivation,” Bode said.

Now the staff is “recognizing the students that are doing the positive behavior, communicating well about what behaviors we expect at school – respect, ownership, responsibility, safety – and so we really started to do more education around that. With the support of our school board, we adopted a new bullying policy. We put in a bullying report process and an investigation process and a response and follow up plan process, and that has been helpful. We declined our behavior incidents by 15% in one year,” said Bode.

Engaging parental assistance in making sure students attend school became another primary goal for the district. With 42% of the student population being chronically absent (missing 18 days or more in one year). “When we came back from that virtual learning, our attendance rate dropped to 88% and so it’s really hard to teach kids when they’re not there.” The attendance rate last year was 91.5%.

To read the Colorado Department of Education’s 2024-2025 Unified Improvement Plan for the Estes Park R-3 District, click here.

To review the Colorado Department of Education’s 2023 Performance Framework Results “snapshot” for the Estes Park R-3 District, click here.