The boards of directors of Rocky Mountain Prep and STRIVE Prep voted earlier this month to join together into a single, unified public school system beginning July 1, 2023.

Tricia Noyola, Rocky Mountain Prep’s current CEO, will serve as the CEO of the unified early childhood education (ECE) to 12th-grade school network, which will retain the STRIVE Prep name.

The uniting of the networks will provide a continuous and cohesive ECE-12 education experience for families, Noyola told Boardhawk in an interview last week.

"[We're] able to align the curriculum and program experience for kids and families the whole way through, which ultimately nets a much stronger outcome for the child," Noyola said.

“Our families and our communities wanted us to be able to look to the future of STRIVE with a focus on strong academics, more electives, preparing our students for college and, and building on the foundation,” added Jessica Johnson, STRIVE Prep's interim chief executive office for the 2022-23 school year. “Pairing with Rocky Mountain Prep and Tricia’s strong academic leadership experience was really answering the call that our families and our communities have made.”

Today, the two networks comprise 14 schools serving roughly 5,100 students. By unifying, the new STRIVE Prep network will be able to direct additional resources to the classroom, strengthen academics, amplify its focus on social-emotional learning, and continue successful college and career outcomes for all students, including for special education and multilingual students.

“For many years, families at Rocky Mountain Prep have been wanting us to expand into middle school and high school and this new ECE-12th grade network allows us to help meet that need for our families and the community,” said Pat Donovan, Rocky Mountain Prep’s board chair and managing partner of RootED Denver. “The two organizations share many of the same values and approaches to academic success; joining together feels like a natural fit that will address the gap and provide a pathway for our students for their entire education through high school.”

Families and educators can find answers to frequently asked questions about the unification here and read a letter to both school communities here. Read Boardhawk’s Q&A with Noyola and Johnson here.

Denver Public Schools announced last week a new strategic roadmap for the district.

The new plan—called DPS Thrives—is designed to help students rebound from learning disruptions and lost learning opportunities caused by the pandemic, and to “disrupt and redesign inequitable systems and practices,” the district said in an announcement.

The roadmap includes the district’s new vision, Every Learner Thrives, and a new mission: “Educational equity is our collective responsibility. We prepare students for career, college and life. We create conditions and partnerships where students, families and team members belong and thrive.”

The roadmap was introduced the day after Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) results showed alarming data about grade-level proficiency in Denver schools.

“As yesterday’s CMAS data showed, most Denver Public Schools students are not yet meeting grade-level proficiency,” the district said in an announcement. “We recognize that we can’t continue to conduct business as usual. We have to do more.

Read the executive summary of the strategic roadmap here and read the entire roadmap here.

School is back in session—and for some Denver students, learning never stopped.

Highline Academy Charter Schools southeast and northeast campuses were two of 11 Denver-area charter schools that used Response, Innovation, and Student Equity (RISE) Fund grant dollars to fund 2021 and 2022 summer learning and enrichment activities to mitigate the academic and social-emotional impacts of COVID-19 on their students.

With the grant, the charter schools partnered to redesign their school years to offer more than 2,000 of Colorado’s highest-need students the opportunity to participate in innovative extended-school-year programs that included academic, social-emotional and experiential components. Each program was carefully designed to address the disproportionate harmful impact that COVID-19 has had on the participating schools’ communities.

As part of the grant agreement, schools were required to include robust academic programming with an emphasis on subjects with greater learning losses over the last two school years. They were also required to incorporate activities and events that engaged families, and that provided opportunities for students to experience learning in fun environments and in ways that fostered a greater sense of belonging.

As part of their summer learning, Highline students stretched their literacy, math and critical inquiry skills through play and practice, and visited Meow Wolf Denver's Convergence Station immersive art experience and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science—outings that welcomed families to participate, too.

Highline’s administrators and teachers identified students who could benefit from the added summer learning, and they have seen positive outcomes in academic growth and social-emotional health for students who have participated in the program.

“Our families, students, educators and program directors have been so grateful to be a part of this opportunity,” said Brittany Joyce, director of strategy and communications for Highline Academy Charter Schools. “We did this for the students who we knew would benefit most from this kind of support.”

Mark your calendars. On September 20 from 5-6:30 p.m., RootED will host a virtual event to take a closer look at student academic growth in Denver Public Schools.

Leaders in research and education will discuss pre-pandemic data, district interim assessment data, and Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) results to better understand where we’ve been, where we are and where we’re headed with student academic growth.

Presenters will also look beyond the data to identify strategies that have been or could be successful and could guide better outcomes for Denver’s students.

We will send an event update and share more event information on our social media channels in September. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to be among the first to know when we share the news.

As we kick off the 2022-23 school year, we’re excited to be part of a new program that helps give students access to higher performing schools.

Bright Rides provides Adams 14 students with free transportation to a high-quality school in Denver. Made possible by a state grant, it provides customized rides through HopSkipDrive, a school transportation service that is trusted by parents throughout the country.

Thank you to our partners at Transform Education Now for making this possible. If you’re interested in learning more about Bright Rides and how it can benefit students, visit www.brightrides.org.

Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) results are available now on the state Board of Education’s website.

CMAS score reports help explain whether students are meeting the grade-level expectations laid out in the Colorado Academic Standards and whether they are on track for the next grade level.

While the number of required state assessments administered in spring 2021 was reduced to provide relief from COVID-19, the full set of assessments administered in spring 2022 gives us a more complete picture of how students performed following the learning disruptions and lost learning opportunities during the pandemic.

Read Chalkbeat’s analysis of state CMAS results here. Chalkbeat’s coverage includes a tool that can be used to find assessment results for specific schools. Stay tuned for additional insight from RootED on CMAS results, including deeper looks at data for Denver Public Schools.