Where Your Children Are colorado

Shooting at high school leaves one student injured, one suspect at-large

volleyball
image courtesy Vince Fleming on Unsplash

All schools in the Sheridan School District in Sheridan, Colorado are closed today after a shooting Tuesday evening during a volleyball game that sent one student from a neighboring district to the hospital. The suspect is still on the loose, and while the district insists this is an “isolated incident,” they insist that all schools need to be closed.

The shooting took place in the parking lot of Sheridan High School during a girls’ volleyball game between the school and the Bruce Randolph School in Denver.

Sheridan School District No. 2 (oddly enough, the No. 1 appears to be in Wyoming) serves students in 5 schools in Sheridan, Colorado.

Sheridan High School in Sheridan, Colorado has a student population (grades 9-12) of 369 students, 78% of whom are Hispanic. They grossly underperform on math and reading, compared with the state average. Eighty-seven percent of students meet income eligibility requirements for free lunch.

There is no mention of the shooting on Sheridan School District’s website other than a big red “All Day Closure,” banner up top, also reading, “Sheridan School District 2 is closed today, October 9, 2019 due to an incident last night.” Nice and cryptic. They do have a much more direct message on their front page about accepting all students regardless of immigration status, and their refusal to support separating children from their families at the border.

The Bruce Randolph School in Denver, Colorado serves 795 students in grades 6-12. Ninety percent of their student population is Hispanic, with another 9% listed as black. They perform even worse on standardized tests than those at Sheridan, with only 5% meeting math proficiency requirements, and 14% demonstrating reading proficiency. Eighty-eight percent of students are eligible for free lunch. The school is within Denver Public School District. No mention of the shooting is on their website at all.

All Sheridan Schools Closed After Shooting Outside High School

Shooting at Sheridan High School leaves 1 injured; suspect at-large, police say

Sheridan School District NO. 2

Sheridan High School – Public School Review

Denver Public Schools

Bruce Randolph School – Public School Review

Where Your Children Are colorado

The high cost of sexual assault in schools

Brian_Vasquez
image courtesy Aurora Police Department

As if it weren’t enough that the victims of sexual assault in schools carry their pain and trauma into adulthood and often for the rest of their lives, school districts often face the payment of huge settlements to try and make up for the placement of a pervert in the classroom.

Cherry Creek School District in Arapahoe County, Colorado, has reached a $11.5 million settlement with five victims of abuse by one Brian Vasquez, a 34-year-old former social studies teacher at Prairie Middle School. He has pled guilty to charges of sexual abuse and attempted sexual abuse, and according to officials, has admitted to sending explicit text messages to all five victims and having sex with at least two of them.

That’s not all: it emerged that one victim attempted, way back in 2013, to report the abuse to school officials, including a principal and counselor, who did nothing with the information. Both were indicted on misdemeanor charges for failing to report the allegations to police. It’s alleged that at the time the victim made the allegations, she was not only forced to recant her statements and apologize to her abuser, but was then suspended from school.

Cherry Creek School District encompasses 65 schools in the Denver/Aurora area. In their budget report they project the per-student spending for the 2018-2019 school year to average about $8,100. The $11.5 million settlement paid to the 5 victims equates to the education budget for over 1400 students within the district. Two million dollars will come from the district’s insurance policy (because, hey, you’ve got to be prepared for things like this, am I right?), and the remaining $9.5 million will come from budget reserves.

Prairie Middle School has received a poor grade of 3/10 from GreatSchools, citing test scores well below the national average and lack of support for lower income children (who make up about 75% of the student body). Parent feedback about the school is mixed.

Vasquez will be sentenced later this week, where he faces up to 40 years in prison. He taught at Prairie Middle School for seven years. Prior to that, he worked in two other Colorado school districts.

Vasquez has two young children.

School District Announces $11.5M Settlement With Students Sexually Assaulted By Teacher

Prairie Middle School teacher Brian Vasquez now faces 31 felony child sex charges

Cherry Creek School District to pay $11.5 million to 5 students who were sexually assaulted by a teacher

Cherry Creek School District Profile of Student-Based Budgeting for Schools FY2018-19

Prairie Middle School on GreatSchools.org

Where Your Children Are colorado, oklahoma

Surprise, surprise: Less school improves morale and performance

book-boys-children-1094071.jpg
Photo by Victoria Borodinova from Pexels

This may seem like common sense to many of us, but school districts in rural Oklahoma and Colorado are just now jumping on the bandwagon: less school apparently leads to greater student success.

Four-day weeks have been implemented in many small schools, undoubtedly eliminating the time spent on needless political and ideological indoctrination and placing the focus back on academics, forcing parents to spend an extra day with their children and fostering better relationships that, of course, result in happier, brighter, more receptive children.

This doesn’t take into account the benefit to teachers of having a four-day work week. Good teachers (you know, the ones that aren’t degenerates or pedophiles) often experience burnout after very little time within public schools, due to the long hours, unnecessary busywork, “character education” (i.e., brainwashing under the guise of “acceptance,” and of course, teachers’ unions, which do little to actually help teachers and a whole lot to help the Democratic Party.

Of course, as the push for four-day school weeks moves toward urban centers, there will be backlash, as parents who work will have to coordinate child care, or leave children unattended. Of course, teachers’ unions lobby for more money in spite of the shorter weeks (higher salaries for teachers equate with higher union dues paid to them).

Shorter weeks? Longer hours? “Better teachers” through higher pay? Year-round school? Distance education? There are many questions related to improving public schools and increasing student performance, but after the research, the debate, and the experimentation, the conclusion often arrived at is this: the public school system is inherently flawed, and no amount of corrective measures will make it adequate.

Four-day weeks bring smiles in rural schools. But will they work in big cities?