The new year always provides me with an opportunity to reflect on the previous year and look forward to the upcoming year’s opportunities and challenges.
I feel personally blessed to be able to lead our school district and to work in a community where we all can come together around what is best for our children and students.
We are grateful for the support we already receive from our community, parents, board, and volunteers and we are committed to continuing to inspire community trust and support.
Our schools and students receive support every day from so many community and parent volunteers and I’d like to take a chance to personally say thank you.
Our elementary schools and middle school are implementing the WatchDog Dads program, which is engaging dozens of dads as volunteers and mentors every week. We love having these dads in our schools and students enjoy having these dads volunteer in their classes.
Our schools are also partnering with Montezuma School to Farm, the Montezuma Inspire Coalition, the Pinion Project, and Girls on the Run, which bring many volunteers into our schools to provide school gardening classes, running programs, mentoring, after-school enrichment and other activities to engage our students in outdoor learning activities.
Our high school FFA program is successful in large part due to support from an advisory council made up of volunteers from the community as well as business leaders.
I want to thank all the parents and community members who volunteer their time to attend regular school accountability and parent teacher organization meetings. These volunteers help advise schools on their academic programs, how to best support students, and overall school improvement strategies.
These parent volunteers also help raise money to support our students and schools in buying student computers, supplies and other programming.
January is School Board appreciation month and I want to take a moment to thank our school board for their service this past year. School board members are your elected representatives that serve on a voluntary basis to provide guidance and oversight to our district and ensure we are doing our best to meet the needs of our students.
A full list of our board members and their bios are available on our district home page.
Please consider attending our board meetings to learn more about their work and share your thoughts or suggestions.
Feel free to reach out to any of them with ideas or just to say thanks.
Thank you again to of you who take the time to read to your students at home, help with homework, volunteer in the schools and attend school or board meetings. We cannot be successful without all of you – I am inspired by your support!
Lori Haukeness is superintendent of Montezuma-Cortez School District RE-1. Reach her at lhaukeness@cortez.k12.co.us.
