Garfield Re-2 School District elementary teachers are recommending a new English language arts curriculum for the 2025-26 school year following a months-long pilot program involving four different reading programs.

Simone Richardson, the district’s director of curriculum, instruction and assessment at the elementary level, presented the results during an April 9 school board meeting. She said the district is recommending Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts, or CKLA, after it outperformed the other three options in both classroom outcomes and teacher support.

Three programs — Amplify CKLA, HMH Into Reading, and McGraw Hill Reading Wonders — were tested alongside Garfield Re-2’s current curriculum, which combines SuperKids and ReadyGen. Teachers implemented each program in classrooms during the fall semester and also consulted with districts already using them, including Eagle, Mesa, Summit, Moffat, Poudre, Harrison and Douglas counties.

“Ultimately, the data showed that the new programs outperformed our existing one,” Richardson said.

Teachers from across the district participated in two rounds of voting to select their preferred curriculum. In the first round, Amplify CKLA and HMH Into Reading emerged as frontrunners, while McGraw Hill Reading Wonders was eliminated due to concerns about its overwhelming number of resources, lack of vendor support, and unstructured lesson plans.

In the second round, Amplify CKLA received the majority vote. Teachers cited its integration of science and social studies content and its high academic rigor as key strengths, though some noted challenges with balancing teacher-led and student-led instruction.

“There are always tradeoffs, but this program gives us a strong foundation to work from,” Richardson said.

She added that Garfield Re-2 plans to implement the “conservative” version of Amplify CKLA — a version the vendor has assured the district contains no religious content and includes only age-appropriate material.

“Some historical accounts and religious-based material can clash with the needs or values of different districts or families,” Richardson said. “We’re choosing a version that avoids those conflicts.”

Parents will be notified about the curriculum rollout through letters sent home, which will include reminders and information about the content.

Jami Zimmerman, first grade teacher at Cactus Valley Elementary shared a story from parent-teacher conferences in October to illustrate how engaging the new material has been.

“They said, ‘We don’t know what’s going on with this girl, but we can’t get her to be quiet,'” Zimmerman said. “She was going on and on about Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Mayans, the Aztecs.”

Zimmerman emphasized that teaching history includes introducing students to the beliefs of ancient cultures — not to promote them, but to foster understanding.

“If you’re going to learn about Ancient Egypt, you have to learn what they believed,” she said. “That’s how they passed stories from generation to generation.”

Learning about other cultures’ beliefs, teachers said, helps students understand history — and themselves.

Kelly Hilbrand, a first-grade instructional coach at Wamsley Elementary, said she’s seen dramatic changes in student engagement.

“I’ve never seen kids so excited to come to class every day,” Hilbrand said. “They feel successful. I had ELL students who didn’t speak English at the beginning of the year, and now they’re reading. They tell me, ‘I can read.'”

Roughly 15 teachers involved in the pilot program, representing schools including Wamsley, Graham Mesa and Kathryn Senor, attended the presentation. While some acknowledged the program isn’t perfect, all voiced strong support for adopting Amplify CKLA.