Weekly Superintendent Update, April 22

Weekly Superintendent Update, April 22
Posted on 04/22/2022
Photo of Diana Sirko

This has been an excellent week for celebrating the great people of District 51! I had the opportunity to honor several students and colleagues at the School Board meeting on Tuesday and traveled to Denver on Wednesday to celebrate our Athletic Director, Paul Cain, as he was inducted into the CHSAA Hall of Fame. In addition, we had 26 students from D51 high schools qualify for Nationals at this week’s FBLA State Leadership Conference!


Tonight, we will honor outstanding schools and educators at the D51 Foundation White Iced celebration, and I look forward to celebrating our staff and 4.0 seniors next week at the Superintendent Scholars and Salute to Staff events!


High School Start Date: Aug. 12

The First Day of School for 2022-23 will now be Friday, Aug. 12 for both kindergarten students and students at the following schools:
*
Central High School
*
Fruita 8/9 School
*
Fruita Monument High School
*
Gateway School
*
Grand Junction High School
* Grand River Academy
*
Palisade High School
*
R-5 High School
*
Valley/Career Center


The start date will remain Wednesday, Aug. 10, for all other schools. The delayed start for the schools above will allow staff at those schools to participate in Capturing Kids’ Hearts training Aug. 10-11. Our middle school staff participated in Capturing Kids’ Hearts training last August and it has made such an impact that we felt it was crucial to expand the training to more schools as soon as possible. This training helps teachers and administrators learn how to build stronger relationships with students, create a safe and effective learning environment, handle conflict and negative behavior, and foster a sense of belonging for students.

 

Illuminate Education Data Breach

You may have heard about potentially protected student data being compromised in school districts using an assessment, progress monitoring and screening tool called Educlimber. We recently received a letter from Illuminate Education (parent company of Educlimber) stating that some potentially protected data involving past or current students may have been accessed during a breach of Illuminate Education’s database. 

 

The databases impacted by the unauthorized access may have included student names, academic and behavior information, enrollment information, accommodation information, special education information, and demographic information. Social security numbers and financial information was not part of the breach.  We are taking this seriously and have requested a full report on the breached files. We will notify the Attorney General’s Office once we have the files and notify any affected students and their families. 

 

Board Coffee

The final Board Coffee of the 2021-22 school year will be at 9 a.m. Saturday, April 30, in the cafeteria at East Middle School. This is a great chance to interact with your School Board members.