Haxtun Board of Education meets via Zoom last week; makes tough decisions pertaining to year-end events

No prom, not the traditional graduation, no more in-person learning for the rest of the year ... an hour-long meeting with members of the Haxtun Board of Education brought a gloomy end to the 2019-20 school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and guidelines handed down from the State's Governor.

For the second month in a row, BOE members met via Zoom, a cloud-based video conferencing tool, allowing each member to remain home while conducting District business. The April meeting, hosted by Board President Rich Starkebaum, began with reports from administration.

"As I have been communicating in updates, Haxtun teachers are doing a great job at engaging students remotely," Superintendent Darcy Garretson said in her report to the Board. "Although no one I know of thinks remote learning is ideal, especially in the middle of the year and having limited time to prepare, I feel like our staff has done a remarkable job."

The April meeting originally included action items to discuss the District calendar for the remainder of the year, however, the morning of the meeting, Colorado Governor Jared Polis made final decisions for all schools, declaring no in-person instruction for the reminder of the 2019-20 school year; taking the decision out of the hands of the local Board.

Administration was prepared to ask the Board to continue with remote learning for the remainder of the year and use the second week in May to follow up with some face-to-face instruction with students who may have deficits to prepare them for grade-level learning in the fall, however, the Governor also put a halt to that, making it clear no Colorado students will return to school this year.

With that news, the Board voted to postpone prom indefinitely, which was originally slated for April 18 with hopes to postpone to June. The BOE also made the decision to keep the May 17 graduation day for seniors, however, the traditional ceremony will look much different.

Due to virus concerns and mandates from the Governor, the Haxtun School District will keep the same Sunday, May 17 graduation date and plans are to host some sort of online/virtual ceremony. High School Principal Alan Nall plans to work with seniors and parents to plan the event. More details are to follow on the District website, Facebook page and in the Herald.

With that, Haxtun BOE members also voted to certify the list of 13 graduates for 2020 graduation.

The following list of licensed staff members were hired for the 2020-21 school year: Alan Coffin, Amanda Ridlen, Amy Schadegg, Ashlea Quigley, Barbara Gorman, Charla Huwa, Christina Lucero, David Shafer, Dena Gerk, Holly Kelly, Staci Tempel, Janet Brophy, Jeff Plumb, Jessica Hofmeister, Jessica Oliver, Kristi Boerner, Larissa Knowlton, Laurie Wilcox, Lindsey Goddard, Meghan Lowe, Michele Bivins, Richard Gerk, Sara Martinez, Sara Michael, Sharon Seger, Stan Kennedy, Havilah Andersen, Patricia Wiebers, Danielle Brandt and Ethan Farquhar.

During reports, Garretson noted that tough budget discussions for the upcoming year will need to take place at next month's meeting.

"Uncertainty makes it hard to envision," she said about the coming year. "Our budget is going to suffer - at this point the predication is $400 less per student and we do not know if we will have families who choose to continue to educate students from home until a vaccine is developed or if families will move."

That $400 less per student, as predicted, would amount to $144,000 for the Haxtun School District.

"I would like to propose that we budget for a decreased budget, which means forgoing many things we were planning to purchase," Garretson told board members.