Academic success

By NATHAN DEAL

Nathan.Deal@gjsentinel.com

When Nick Steinmetz first arrived as R-5 High School’s principal in 2021, the school — which provides its students an alternative path to their education — lacked clarity in its system and structures.

A few years later, the school has turned around its academic performance to the extent that the state couldn’t bestow upon it a higher rating.

The Colorado Department of Education administers four annual ratings for schools as part of its performance framework: Turnaround, Priority Improvement, Improvement and Performance. There are 27 Performance schools in Mesa County Valley School District 51, and for the first time since 2017, R-5 is one of them.

D51 Superintendent Brian Hill and Steinmetz addressed R-5 students in a ceremony Tuesday morning as they presented students a Performance school banner and congratulated them on their academic success.

“The Performance rating is massive when you serve 95% at-risk kids, when they don’t have a place to sleep or they don’t have regular food or clothing or supportive home environments. Those things all get in the way, so we resort as humans to survival and the last thing we think about in terms of survival is going and learning,” Steinmetz said to The Daily Sentinel.

“It’s shown that we’re able to help them meet some of those basic needs, which is a challenge a lot of schools face but especially us. ... That’s really been an amazing piece of my team getting together and saying, ‘This is the culture we want to develop and we know we can impact these kids with.’ ” Steinmetz detailed the foundation-building process that began three years ago that has translated to this improvement in the classroom. He said the key to continuing to build on this success is getting students more involved with the school’s leadership decisions that impact them.

“I sat down with my team and we worked on really assembling the right team together that really cared about kids. One of the biggest things we did was implementing personalized graduation plans for every kid, so they come in and the first thing they do is work on developing this graduation plan of what they need to graduate, where they want to go after they graduate, and what are some barriers and obstacles along the way,” Steinmetz said.

“That’s goal-setting.

They can go back and revise it. It doesn’t always have to be this thing that’s set in stone because their ambitions might change next week, and that’s OK. It gives them this clarity and understanding of what they need to do and how to get there.”

Hill called it a testament to R-5’s leadership and teachers that the school not only earned the state’s highest academic rating but also is outperforming some traditional high schools statewide.

“That’s the thing I love about R-5: if traditional high school didn’t work for whatever reason for some of our students, they found a home here, and I think the only way you can be academically successful is if you take care of student needs first, if you have a safe environment where they feel cared for so they can actually learn. That’s what the staff does here at R-5,” Hill told The Daily Sentinel.

“They really look out for the whole child and figure out how to support students. A lot of the students here work full-time jobs and they have kids themselves and families, and R-5 has found a way to support them through all of that and make sure they’re academically successful so they can graduate and be on a great path down the road. Today’s a celebration of all the hard work they’ve put in to earn that academic rating.”

R-5 was one of three schools Hill and D51 leadership visited Tuesday to recognize as Performance schools with banners.

Orchard Avenue Elementary School earned a Performance rating for the 13th consecutive year.

“Not only that, but they also grew by 14 percentage points,” Hill said. “Even though they were already at Performance, they still grew this past year, which is great.”

The other school Hill visited was Orchard Mesa Middle School, which jumped two levels year-over-year from Priority Improvement to Performance.

R-5 High School students pose with a banner after the school was recognized Yuesday as a Performance school, the highest rating a school can receive. R-5 one of 27 schools in District 51 that received at Performance rating.

LARRY ROBINSON/ The Daily Sentinel

R-5 High School Principal Nick Steinmetz speaks to the student body after the school was honored Tuesday with a banner after being recognized as a Performance school. “The Performance rating is massive when you serve 95% at-risk kids, when they don’t have a place to sleep or they don’t have regular food or clothing or supportive home environments. Those things all get in the way, so we resort as humans to survival and the last thing we think about in terms of survival is going and learning,” Steinmetz said.

LARRY ROBINSON/ The Daily Sentinel

District 51 Superintendent Dr. Brian Hill points Tuesday to a banner for R-5 High School, recognizing its status as a Performance school, the highest rating a school can receive.

LARRY ROBINSON/ The Daily Sentinel