Steve Lee has been driving buses and trucks for a long time. What initially drew him to drive a school bus for the Durango School District 9-R was the hours and benefits. The shifts are typically two hours in the morning and three in the afternoon, which also happens to be enough to earn full benefits, and give him time to run his business during the day.

Dear Durango School District 9-R community,

We hope you are enjoying a wonderful summer. We look forward to the new school year, which begins August 24. Here are updates regarding our COVID-related health protocols for the 2021-22 school year.

Thank you to the many of you who participated in our various feedback sessions regarding the recommendations from health authorities regarding COVID-19 mitigation strategies in school.

In response to community feedback, the district has updated details on options to rebuild Miller Middle School on site. Please review these options carefully and provide any additional feedback via the current survey, or by participating in the August 5th feedback session via zoom.

Durango School District 9-R is drafting updated guidelines for the 2021/22 academic school year regarding mitigation efforts around COVID-19, and your input is important to us. As we shared last spring, 9-R is returning to offering in-person learning models for all students. The district has a strong online academic offering through Connections Academy to serve families seeking remote learning opportunities.

As part of the 4A Bond, Miller Middle School will be replaced. We are seeking community input on the redesign.

As part of the Sustainability Promises by the District, 9-R is looking to create a Sustainability Committee composed of staff, students, parents and local experts.

We are committed to sharing our student achievement data with transparency. We recognize the incredible effort put forth by our staff this year and are grateful for their perseverance and flexibility. Yet, our end-of-year assessment data tells us that our students need intentional and unified support to ensure that the impacts of the pandemic are not long-lasting and far-reaching in our students' literacy and math skills. We are working with great urgency to turn around our historical trend of under-serving portions of our community and to minimize the impact of disrupted learning COVID-19 has had on all of our learners.

Congratulations 9-R families, students and staff… we made it! This was a year for the books and certainly created many new memories. While it wasn’t a typical school year for any of us, learning to live with masks, quarantines, and ever-changing school schedules it was still an amazing school year and we have so much to celebrate and be grateful for.

District leaders have recently received recommendations from three work groups: The Culture and Equity Design Team, the Significant Disproportionality Work Group, and the Native American Parental Advisory Committee. Their recommendations will guide the district in strategic planning to continue addressing concerns of inequity within our system.