Superintendent Update

The Telluride School District will support all students in striving for their highest potential through quality academics while addressing individual needs within a safe and healthy community.

Dear TSD Families and Community,

This newsletter will cover the following topics:

1. Update on Potential bond

2. Update on Potential Rico annexation

3. Final calendar for 2023-2024

4. Update on school cancellations and delays

5. Transportation and bus driver challenges

6. Concerns regarding snow on the athletic field.

Bond Update – We have had two meetings of our Citizen Task Force to explore whether to put a measure on the ballot in November for employee housing and major facilities projects. A mailer will go out to all addresses within R-1 District boundaries to share information and seek voter input in the upcoming weeks. A final decision on whether to place a bond measure on the ballot will be made by the BOE in June, based on the recommendation of the Task Force and feedback from voters. We will hold public engagement meetings starting after break. I would like to thank the members of the Task Force for their willingness to contribute in engaging discussions: Todd Baize, Banks Brown, Mario Cortes Lopez, John Duncan, David Eckman, Claudia Garcia Curzio, Michelle Haynes, Jessica Heady, Jason Merritt, Melanie Montoya Wasserman, Toni Nash, Martha Starr, James Van Hooser, Kolby Ward, Heather Young, and Lee Zeller.

Rico Annexation Update – the Planning Committee has now held three meetings since January. A Plan has been started and the committee’s website will be up and public soon. Members of the committee will be on KOTO Off the Record on Tuesday, March 28 at 6:00pm to discuss the committee’s progress. Please listen in and feel free to call in with questions.

Calendars – Our school calendars are now published on our website, both the 2023-2024 Final Calendar and the 2024-2025 Draft Calendar.

School Cancellations and Delays – After two full-day cancellations and a two-hour delay, we are now at 279 instructional minutes above the state minimum. If we were to have one more full-day cancellation, we would be 117 minutes below the minimum, and would need to send the Colorado Department of Education a plan for how those minutes would be made up before the end of the school year. This could be done with the cancellation of two Tuesday early releases, but we will cross that bridge if and when we get to it.

Transportation and Drivers – If you are not aware, transportation has been a huge challenge for our school district, as it has been for districts across the state and across the country. We are fortunate that for our three regular daily routes, our three certified drivers have missed only a small handful of days this year, and those days have been filled in by those of us that can drive mini-buses. For field trips and athletics, we have been scrambling with a combination of mini-buses (for which we often rely on certified volunteers and/or pull staff away from other responsibilities) and at times Telluride Express (which is almost always beyond our budget, plus Telluride Express has their own driver challenges). While we have spare buses for field trips and athletics, there are no CDL-S certified driver to drive one of our buses (the “-S” stands for school bus supplemental certification).

Based on this, we are putting out the following request to both community members and staff:

1. Get certified to drive a mini-bus – This takes some book training, passing a written test, and passing a driving test. All of that can be completed in as little as a few days.

2. Get CDL-S certified to drive a big bus – CDE will run a full-week training June 26-30 in our area (Ouray/Ridgway) to train and certify drivers with a CDL and the -S supplement. Anyone interested is welcome to attend to gain their certification.

While I realize driving a school bus may not sound like the most appealing pastime, I would not put out the request if there was not extraordinary need that we expect to continue into the future. And while there are other ways to earn extra income, having these certifications provides the opportunity to earn extra money. For anyone interested, we could use someone as a full-time route driver, a substitute route driver, a field trip and/or athletics driver, whether as a big bus driver or a mini-bus driver.

Snow and Spring Athletics – As you know we have had a snowy February and March, with several feet of fresh snow already fallen and more on the way. In the least snowy years, we have challenges having our athletic field cleared by the start of the Spring sports season. We typically plan for one or two clearings of the field with a contracted snow removal service. This is expensive (several thousand dollars per time); we are beholden to the contractor’s schedule; and any heavy machinery on the field contributes to deterioration of the field. On a heavy snow year like this year, we also have nowhere to put the snow. We do not haul snow away from our campus (including our parking lots) as it is a significant additional expense, and right now even the town is struggling to find places to put the snow they are hauling away from clearing the roads. Currently the snow mounds next to the athletic field from the field clearing are huge, which creates a host of additional problems. While we all love a snowy year for the mountains, we are feeling the impact of this on our campus. Please understand that we appreciate the concerns that have been expressed, and if there was an easy solution we would already have taken care of it. This and the transportation issues described above compound each other, as now we need to travel more for sports without enough drivers. We do care, and it is a priority as much as anything is, but the fact is we live in Telluride, it’s still winter, and we cannot control the weather.

With that said, Spring break is only two weeks away, the Vernal Equinox and 12 hours of daylight almost upon us, and it is beautiful out. I hope you are enjoying the weekend!

Sincerely,

John Pandolfo

Superintendent

jpandolfo@telluride.k12.co.us

970-369-1213

Email: jpandolfo@telluride.k12.co.us
Website: tellurideschool.org
Location: 725 West Colorado Avenue, Telluride, CO, USA
Phone: 970-369-1213