The Garfield Re-2 School Board has been holding their regular meetings at all district schools for the past school year to get updates on how those schools are doing. Wednesday, March 12 marked Elk Creek Elementary’s turn. 

Principal Ryan Fideldy shared data regarding the school’s overall CMAS scores from 2021-24.

“We highlighted cohorts, because I think that’s the most important thing that you’ll notice is that a lot of our scores go on a rollercoaster ride and it’s very cohort based,” Fideldy said. “The ebay comparison I made is two seasons ago, Rifle High School made the state championship game and with the same exact coaching staff, that I don’t think got any worse at coaching, only won one game the next year, so it’s basically the cohort that they’re working with.”

Third graders in the 2021-2022 school year scored a 22% in the English Language Arts (ELA) section of their CMAS tests, but the next year, as fourth graders, scored a 29%. In the 2023-2024 year as fifth graders, their ELA score was 17%.

Elk Creek Elementary has 285 students to teach with a total of 55 staff members, averaging a class size of 19 and an attendance rate of 94.13%. 

Fifth graders at Elk Creek engage in service learning, which are for students who are at or above grade level reading and don’t go to reading intervention.

“So these kids are working in preschool, they’re working in kindergarten, first, second grade, we have kids working in the office, we have kids working in the kitchen, we have kids working all over the place doing service learning, every day,” Fideldy said. “Those are those kids that don’t necessarily need reading intervention, so they’re helping us in school and building our community.”

Fideldy said at Elk Creek Elementary, during the summer, they take a lot of staff input on how long children learn certain subjects, particularly ELA. As a large part of their student base, 73 kids are ELL students. Fiedeldy said there are a multitude of different programs they try to implement to help students, but sometimes the recommended times aren’t helpful. 

“The programs give recommended times, so we try to stay in those boxes, but the teachers find out pretty quickly after a year or two of instruction that, “this 20 minutes is not useful, we could do something else with that,” Fideldy said. “Like Amplify Science, two years ago, we were doing 60 minutes of science and now we’re down to 25 minutes, because the teachers found it was dry.”

Every student has a subject they find to be “boring”, and if that subject is being taught in a dry manner due to a program suggestion, then they might not learn it. 

As principal, Fideldy is focused on student wellness. He knows teachers are putting in effort for the students and their academic achievements, while also trying to find the missing piece of what they can do for the students to have those academics reflect their effort. 

Brenda Murphy, counselor at Elk Creek Elementary, presented with Fideldy on their student wellness programs, such as the school’s Focused Kids program. 

“I’ve got this quote that says, ‘every kid wants to relate to the world and the people in it with ease,’ but sometimes they don’t know how to do that, they don’t know how to control those thoughts, emotions or their behaviors,” Murphy said. “Focused Kids…is teaching them some brain based skills that could be lifelong, and that helps our kids to understand what’s happening in their bodies and how to control that or change that.”

Having a common place to come from with common language helps not only the students with their emotions, but also the staff to understand what’s going on to help the student, Murphy explained.

“Every class has a wellness basket,” Murphy said as she showed one to the Re-2 board of education.

The basket has the same stuffed animals or puppets in every basket, like the Guard Dog, which is the response that “fights for us” and “bites back” to keep us safe. The kids, when having a response, pick which animal that describes their emotions. 

“So those big emotions that they get, what can they do to calm this (Guard Dog) down so then their Wise Owl can come back and do some learning,” Murphy said. “It’s a really good foundation for all of that.”

Murphy said the Focused Kids group helps give lessons to students and they tailor those lessons to classes. One of the classes coming up is for test anxiety. Classrooms also have a Calm Corner if the students need to use regulation tactics to calm themselves and if it’s escalating, students will be walked down to the office for more help. 

“As a principal, my big focus…is how can we connect joy with being at school?” Fideldy said. “More than anything, I want kids to want to come to school the next day, regardless of how well they do in school. We have kids that are really talented in a lot of things that have nothing to do with school and there’s kids who are lucky enough to be inherently talented in reading and math…not all the kids are that lucky to come in that way, so how can we grow those kids and accelerate their progress?”