This initiative will support three Colorado communities to engage stakeholders to examine a public education challenge, explore its root causes, and design a locally-driven solution.
The challenge we seek to address is how Canon City might more effectively attract and retain high-quality staff in light of the fact it experiences floor funding from the Colorado Department of Education, and thus struggles to provide a competitive compensation and benefits package to staff, as well as the fact it is the only 5-day school week holdout left in its geographic region.
We desire to put into place, with support from our greater community, processes by which we can more readily attract and retain high-quality educators long into the future without having to migrate to a traditional 4-day school week calendar. If we are successful we will see an uptick in the number of qualified people who apply for open positions, be they classified or certified, in our school district.
