Crestone Charter School News: New and Returning Enrollment at CCS

By Thomas Cleary, Crestone Charter School director.

The season is upon us to start to plan for next school year! Families can think about the best educational fit for their children, and community members can think about the role CCS plays in our larger context. 

The complete Crestone Charter School (CCS) Enrollment Policy is available at bit.ly/CCSenroll2023 but is summarized here. 

Students who currently attend CCS will receive a re-enrollment form in the first week of April which must be returned to CCS by May 3 to continue their enrollment. 

New families and students interested in joining CCS should visit the school, meet the director, and complete a pre-enrollment form by 8 a.m. on May 8. On May 9, new students will be placed in classrooms based on space availability at a target of eight students per grade. A classroom with two grades has a capacity of 18 students, a class with four grades such as LINK/HS caps at 32 students. 

If the number of new and returning students exceeds the cap, a ranked lottery system will be utilized. See the linked document or website for details on the process. Educators also know that student learning and growth are directly tied to consistency and we encourage transitions to take place between school years; now is the time to think about next school year.

Please join us for a school Open House on April 20, regardless of your place in the Crestone community. Curious kindergarteners are strongly encouraged to visit.

CCS is thriving

All our major experiential programs are thriving with classes traveling this spring to the Great Sand Dunes, Mesa Verde National Park, primitive skills camp in Colorado, the Grand Canyon National Park, and Puerto Rico.

Our beginning-of-the-year campout is already scheduled for next year. 

This year, classes also did shorter day trips to visit Adam State theater performances and the rock climbing wall there, the Colorado General Assembly, pumpkin and carrot farms, bat caves, service projects, hot springs, 14 swim days for the youngers, 10 ski days for the older students and nature hikes in our backyard learning environment. 

With formal academics, we are entering our second year with the Eureka Squared elementary math and our secondary math teacher has found his rhythm. 

Next year will be our third year with the Core Knowledge Language Arts Program (CKLA), an elementary reading and writing program that spirals and integrates science and social studies. 

This dovetails well with our Structured Literacy program for developing readers. Our middle school and high school humanities teachers are each starting their fourth year at CCS.

According to our latest NWEA results for the 22/23 school year, the average growth of CCS students’ learning was well above the US average for math (65th percentile, where 50th percentile is average growth), and CCS students grew significantly more than other US students in reading (67th percentile).

In the 2024/25 school year, I will be in my fourth year as director. There will likely be some teacher and administrative turnover but the majority of staff are returning. Just as students’ school consistency is important for their learning, so is a school’s staff and programming consistency. 

We plan to build on our institutional knowledge in the areas of Trauma-Informed Restorative Practices, the development and implementation of our non-academic holistic core values, and the efficacy of our academic curriculum delivery and documentation. 

This year I am implementing ideas from CCS’s strategic plan developed last year, specifically: 

A 4-day school week with additional Friday programming for experiential programming, student supports including academic challenge, goal setting, and social-emotional skills, increasing parent involvement and informational opportunities, increasing breakout spaces and adding a greenhouse, and having students develop interpretative nature trails. 

The thrust of this article is to remind you of the CCS enrollment process and to think about where you want your child to thrive next year, but also for you to hear about all that is happening at CCS. CCS welcomes you.