One Door Project successful so far in Garfield Re-2 School District

The Garfield Re-2 School Board received an update on their One Door Project during their regular meeting on Jan. 22.
“The story about the Maasai Tribe in Africa, they greet each other with ‘how are the children?’ and they always answer with, ‘the children are well’,” said Amanda Vaughn, the One Door Resource Coordinator. “Meaning, of course, that peace and safety prevail.”
The One Door Resource Center is for families to come and get things they need from one place, which is the inspiration for the center’s name. Basic needs like food, hygiene and clothing, financial, housing or legal assistance, navigating school systems and departments, help connecting to community agencies and support for students and families in crisis situations for mental health or domestic abuse and more.
“This project has moved really, really, really fast,” Vaughn said. “It’s hard to imagine that five years ago is when COVID happened and in five years, we’ve accomplished some pretty tremendous things with One Door.”
One Door focused on mental health in the first couple years of its concept.
“That year in particular, between January and June of 2022, in Garfield County, between Parachute and Aspen, it was a rough year and in that year, we lost a lot of children,” Vaughn said. “Children between the ages of 0 to 21, children died by suicide, by homicide, by medical problems, accidents. It was awful.”
Vaughn said they felt those losses in Garfield Re-2, no matter if the child was in Parachute or Aspen.
“All of those families…they all come through here, to Rifle and Silt, they have their families and connections here, so our schools and staff felt that,” Vaughn said. “We needed to support all those kids and all the crisis and feelings that they felt.”
Vaughn said that was a large part of the driving force on realizing what they needed to do for the children in the school district.
In the next year, One Door has moved from becoming a concept to being a resource center with connections to places like MindSprings Health, the Aspen Hope Center and the 9th Judicial District, which has their own connections to YouthZone.
From these partnerships, people can go to these different places and ask about One Door to help with that connection, if they can’t make it to the physical location of One Door in Rifle.
Vaughn spoke about the many things One Door provides for children and families of Garfield Re-2.
“The first is our mental health team, which consists of our school counselors,” Vaughn said. “I love our school counselors.”
The school counselors, Vaughn said, wear many hats.
“They are involved in everything: character education, career readiness, they schedule and build agendas, they’re also responsible for crisis response and our students’ wellbeing, they motivate our staff,” Vaughn said. “They’re there for everybody. The amount of times I’ve walked into an office and consoling a staff member or teacher, providing support for parents, our counselors just do a million things.”
Vaughn said that she and the directors of curriculum, Simone Richardson and Jacob Pingel, determined they needed to support the counselors as the counselors support the weight of Garfield Re-2.
“All of our children are exploring their identities, figuring out who they want to become, what they want to hope to achieve and for some students and families, it’s a really easy thing,” Vaughn said. “But for some families and kiddos, it’s a really challenging process and so our counselors have been really instrumental in those processes.”
Vaughn said that family liaisons have been helpful as well, where 10 bilingual women are helping families by understanding school processes and also the families themselves.
“They have helped…3,548 students per semester, 1,128 parents as a team…they have attended 1,702 meetings with parents, this includes IEP, attendance and discipline meetings, behavioral and parent conferences,” Vaughn said. “They mentor students, 3,500 individual students, they work in classrooms and interpret for teachers while they’re teaching…they’ve spent approximately 2,000 hours translating documents.”
Vaughn said the family liaisons want their families’ voices to be heard so they work hard to lift them up.
The food pantry at One Door is a little low, Vaughn said, and they would appreciate some donations, if possible.
“Non-perishable foods…hygiene, baby products, snow boots, gift cards for gas or food would be a really good supplement,” Vaughn said.
Despite having a low food pantry at the moment, the One Door Project is succeeding in the five years it’s been a concept to an operation.
“I’m an Re-2 alumni…it is an honor to be sitting here and telling you that we are making a difference,” Vaughn said.

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