The Mancos RE-6 school board wrapped up the 2025-26 school year with a delayed announcement of the Class of 2026’s co-salutatorian, a report on the end-of-the-year strategic plan and the first reading of the new cellphone policy.
The board started by acknowledging a Mancos Matters email sent out prior to the meeting, sharing that Mancos Class of 2026 graduate Amelie Cover is the co-salutatorian for the graduating class alongside Adam Martinez.
“We apologize for the delay in this salutatorian announcement,” Superintendent Audrey Hazleton said in the email. “We strive to provide a graduation celebration that honors every student for their unique gifts, growth and achievement on graduation day. We take ownership and we want to share our explanation for this mistake: After a detailed review of course credit and grade-point averages, it was determined that Amelie’s achievements were exemplary and that she should receive the salutatorian honor alongside Adam.”
Cover will be attending Colorado Mesa University this fall, where she will pursue a degree in nursing. The district said Cover is known for her love of the medical field and kind and helpful personality.
“We have no doubt that Amelie will make a difference in the lives that she touches – she already has,” Hazleton said.
“As long as I’ve known her, she's been in pursuit of a nursing career. It just came naturally to her, and I think so many people will benefit from her knowledge,” Adyan Farrar, district instructional coach and curriculum coordinator, added.
Since Cover was unable to share a speech with the class at graduation, she presented one in the Mancos Matters email to the community.
“Plot twist: Apparently, all those late nights, color-coded planners, frantic assignment submissions and moments of wondering what on earth I was doing actually added up to something,” Cover said. “Today I found out I was named co-salutatorian for the Class of 2026. There are a lot of things they don’t put on a transcript. They don’t list the self-doubt. They don’t measure perseverance. They don’t calculate the times you wanted to give up but didn’t. They don’t assign a GPA to kindness, resilience, or growth. Those are the lessons I'll carry with me long after graduation.”
Later on in the meeting, Hazleton provided an end-of-the-year strategic plan report, where she emphasized the district’s ongoing goal of supporting the whole child and creating an environment of support and growth.
One of the highlights of the report included the results from surveys put out by the district. Hazleton shared that there was overall positive feedback for teacher/student relationships. Some growth areas identified were recognizing positive behavior, building best practices to help students treat each other with respect and increasing the students’ love of school.
Next year, Hazleton said the district will continue to build community-centered learning environments, create a list of values and habits in the future Blue Jay Way, continue to develop the whole child, continue to align supports for students, continue to build parent engagement and more. Hazleton is also working on developing and refining a “fair, equitable and effective” evaluation system for all staff.
She added that this year’s Measures of Academic Progress tests showed an increased growth in reading and language usage and average growth in math.
Finally, the board reviewed the new cellphone policy, which was presented for its first reading. Board President Tim Hunter noted that the only “real change” to the policy is that phones are not allowed in school, with the exception of high school students at lunch.
They defined “passing time” as instructional time, saying that phone usage would not be permitted between classes. The current proposed draft is still open for feedback.
bduran@the-journal.com
