Incident with disgruntled parent discussed
Student and staff safety is the district’s top priority. That was the message RE-1 Valley Interim Superintendent Dr. Martin Foster delivered at a school board meeting Monday when he addressed an incident with an upset parent that occurred Thursday afternoon, Jan. 18, at Ayres Elementary while school was dismissing for the day.
“We had a very disgruntled parent and it caused us a lot of angst,” he said, clarifying that rumors that the individual threatened to shoot the school are not true. “It was a very disgruntled parent but we addressed it immediately; students and staff were not in danger.”
According to a message Dr. Foster sent out to parents Thursday evening, with the coordination of the Sterling Police Department, the situation was diffused quickly and all students and staff were safe. The message also said that the district would be working in coordination with SPD to continue to monitor the situation the following day at Ayres to ensure the safety of all students and staff.
On Monday, a meeting was held with Dr. Foster, SPD, Logan County Sheriff’s Office, Logan Department of Human Services, school principals and the school board president to discuss the situation.
“We had a great discussion. The most important thing I think we do is keep the lines of communication open. Best-laid plans sometimes fall through the cracks. In this situation we thought we had it covered with DHS and the police department but things happen and it just almost was like the perfect storm occurred. Our goal today was to make every effort not to have something like that happen again,” Dr. Foster said. “I think we all left that meeting feeling more sure that we do have a better plan and ways to address these things.”
The superintendent reiterated that the district’s number one goal is “the safety of our kids and our staff.”
During the public comments portion of the meeting, a parent, Jade Curtiss, asked about allowing teachers in the district to be armed
“I know we’ve gotten school resource officers, which is good, I was happy to hear that, but we have five schools here in Sterling. I’m not sure how many resource
officers we have right now but that’s asking a lot to cover all five of the schools,” he said.
Right now RE-1 does have one school resource officer covering two schools, with the hope of adding another one soon. Additionally, in December, Caliche School started allowing armed staff on campus after completing FASTER (Faculty/administrator Safety Training & Emergency Response) training.
“This is an ongoing process of screening, volunteer screening and then doing a training,” board president Steve Shinn explained regarding the FASTER training, thanking Curtiss for his request and telling him the board and administration will discuss it.
Dr. Foster told Curtiss if he wanted to have further conversation about it to contact him.
The board also heard from Cindy Reyes and Azucena “Cena” Nunez Del Rio, RE-1 family community coordinators, who gave an update on truancy and the community engagement board, which provides an opportunity for the student and parent/guardian to partner with community members to identity barriers, develop an action plan and connect to resources that will improve school engagement and attendance.
RE-1’S total truancy caseload so far this year is 285 and there are 238 active cases. The highest truancy level is at Sterling Middle School, which is 24 percent of the caseload, followed by Sterling High School at 23 percent, Campbell Elementary at 19.6 percent, Ayres Elementary at 19 percent and Caliche Schools at 10.7 percent.
Of the 285 students, 46 have left the district. It’s unknown what happened to one of the students but 24 moved away, eight transferred to GOAL High School Academy, 10 went to other online programs, two switched to homeschooling and one dropped out of school.
To date, 72 students have improved their attendance and three students graduated in December. RE-1 has conducted 42 home visits and 43 parent/administration meetings, plus eight students and their parents have been involved in the community engagement meetings. So far this year, the district has filed truancy reports for four students (three ninth graders at Sterling High School and one first grader at Caliche Elementary).
Barriers identified for lack of attendance include transportation for in-town students, which the district does not provide due to lack of bus drivers and overcrowding on buses; illness; single parents with a lack of resources for grades K-5; and no motivation/ teacher issues/schedule issues for grades 6-12.
The district is trying to address the transportation issue with help from the Family Resource Center, which has provided a total of 607 rides to and from school so far this school year.
Board member Heather Harris asked how the truancy rates compare to last year. Reyes explained that the district didn’t keep track of the numbers in as much detail back then.
“We knew there was a problem last year but it wasn’t monitored as much as it is right now,” she said.
Reyes asked the board to give their approval to submit an application to renew the grant that funds the community engagement board and also told them the district needs to figure out something to do about transportation because right now the FRC is taking care of the complete cost to transport students including paying for gas, the salary of the driver and insurance. With the grant, the district was able to provide the FRC with a little bit of money but she isn’t sure if they will be able to continue to do that.
Harris asked if the district could contact area churches that have vans and might be willing to help with transportation. Reyes said they would need to have liability insurance to transport and there would need to be background checks on drivers. In answer to another question about using County Express, Reyes said they no longer transport students because they had trouble controlling some of them and she is unsure if they would be willing to resume offering rides if the district provided a paraprofessional to ride with the students.
Reyes also shared that she was recently contacted by Rae Solomon, a reporter with KUNC radio station, about the homeless situation in Sterling. She was interviewed last week and the interview will air sometime in February.
She said RE-1 is averaging between 40 and 60 homeless students. The district was able to raise about $5,300 for the Mckinneyvento Homeless Fund with a Hat Day for the Homeless fundraiser that was held in November and they also received a $5,000 two-year grant from the El Pomar Foundation to assist with the program.
Reyes also shared that SHS is going to start offering a pantry, which Sources of Strength students are currently working on building, that will be stocked with non-perishable food items and hygiene items. She was able to get $1,000 from Centennial BOCES to help with that project.
Dr. Foster pointed out that the homeless problem is growing everywhere, not just in RE-1. He shared that during the recent arctic cold front, he was approached with a request to use the schools to house the homeless.
“We had no plan; we’ve had no discussion on it. It’s not that I don’t have a kind heart or a soft heart but the bottom line is we didn’t have a plan and I think there are a lot of things that would need to be discussed and really spend a lot of time looking at that before I can make any recommendations to you as a board to do something like this,” Dr. Foster told the board. They agreed there would need to be discussion before they could even consider allowing that.