April 26, 2023 Community Engagement Session
Board of Education Community Engagement Session
April 26, 2023
Thank you for joining us for the recent Board of Education community forum. Please see the tabs below for a list of comments that were provided at the session, as well as questions that were asked and answers that have been provided by district staff. We appreciate your support.
“Concern about discipline for student drug offenses”
“Compliment for ‘community circles’ at school”
“Benefit of social emotional support”
“Policies not followed with fidelity at schools. Communication between district and schools”
“Request to allow more planning time for elementary teachers”
“Concern about teachers leaving LHS during security incident”
“Concern expressed about transgender student participation in sports and facilities at school”
“Desire for the Board to re-examine the district attendance policy”
“‘Standards Based Scoring’ alignment throughout the district needs to have more engagement with parent about it”
“Desire to emphasize tolerance throughout the community to embrace diversity”
“Concern about the pervasiveness of pornography”Families may utilize Open Enrollment to choice students into a school that will meet that student's needs. While many will enroll in a neighborhood school, other schools, including our charter schools, may be seen as a better fit for a particular student. Nutrition Services is always interested in using as much recyclable material as possible. Supply chain availability and higher cost for this option do not always allow it to occur. There has also been difficulty in locating a vendor interested in providing recycling services in the cafeterias. Threats are evaluated by law enforcement, the Thompson School District safety department, and school staff. The response depends on the type of threat and how it is initiated. There are full-time School Resource Officers (SROs) in all the High Schools and our larger Middle Schools. A few of our smaller middle schools share SROs. We also have an SRO paired with a clinician; this is our co-responder unit that is available to all schools. Yes Child Find for children ages 3 through 5 years old is part of Colorado's system for identifying children suspected of having a delay in development as early as possible. If a young child is not meeting typical developmental milestones or someone is concerned about the child’s growth or learning, a referral can be made to Child Find. Thompson School District has a Child Find Process through our Early Childhood and Exceptional Student Services departments. Individual Education Programs (IEPs) are subject to federal regulations. This includes IEP goals, annual and triennial meetings, exit plans, and service(s) provided. The majority of the Special Education budget is centered around staff costs. Allocation of staffing to schools is based on Individual Education Programs (IEPs) that are required for all Special Education students and their level of needs. Per Federal law, students not able to be adequately served within the District are required to be accommodated by placement in and transportation to other programs outside the District, resulting in another significant allocation of available budget funds.