Weld Re-8 District receives accreditation, accolades

    FORT LUPTON – Working on the recommendation of the Weld Re-8 District accountability team, the Re-8 Board of Education again approved each school in the district for accreditation.
    The recommendation, based on ratings provided by the by the Colorado Department of Education as well as the DAC assessment, positions the schools for continued operation, and presumably continued improvement.
    There are two parts to the recommendation process; part one is assigned by CDE, part two is determined by the district DAC. 
    “CDE gives each school a ranking or a rating,” assistant superintendent Carrie Duits said. “They call it a ‘level,’ related to each of the buildings.”
    Based on the growth data for each school in reading, writing and math, CDE prepares a bell curve positioning each school over both an annual and three-year curve. The ratings carry a designation of performance, improvement, priority improvement or turnaround, in descending order based on each school’s position on the curve.
    The district accountability team takes that positioning, couples it with an assessment related to the unified improvement plan and forms the accreditation recommendations for consideration by the Re-8 board. In accordance with the guidelines, each school broke out as follows:
    • Butler Elementary received the status: Performance; Meets Expectations for the Unified Performance Plan;
    • Twombly Elementary, Fort Lupton Middle School and Fort Lupton High School each received  ‘Improvement; Exceeds Expectations for the Unified Improvement Plan.’
    • Quest Academy, a program supporting kids from Twombly, Butler and Fort Lupton Middle School, received the status of ‘Performance; Exceeds Expectations for the Unified Improvement Plan.’
    It’s an ongoing process throughout the year, a positive that caught the eye of CDE officials, who plan to hold the system up as an example for other district throughout the state.
    “Its unique to Fort Lupton, we built it into our process where the DAC members actually go to the school and review the mid-year data with a team from the building, and they report out to the whole accountability committee how that visit went,” Duits said. “So we built in mid-year monitoring. It’s my understanding that CDE is very fascinated by that, and actually they came up and with a production crew to highlight what we do on the CDE website.”

Contact Staff Writer Gene Sears at gsears@metrowestnewspapers.com or 303-659-2522 ext. 217.