Education

It’s apparent what many Wilmot Elementary School students did over winter break: read.

More than half the students met the school’s reading challenge, reading at least 200 minutes for the younger kids or 300 minutes for the older kids.  Many exceeded the goal — and some went way beyond expectations, reading for 2,000 minutes.

One student went on a family road trip and listened to books on tape, which counted for the challenge.

A petition signed by 6,554 Jeffco residents calling for school board President Ken Witt and board members John Newkirk and Julie Williams to resign caused a stir at the board’s meeting on Thursday evening.

Jeffco parent and petition organizer Molly Snyder told board members she is not affiliated with the teachers union, the Jefferson County Education Association. 

Physical therapists, occupational therapists and speech language pathologists are hard to find in Colorado and even harder to recruit with a cash-strapped budget. 

To address shortages, Jeffco Public Schools will begin outsourcing some of those services starting this month.

San Francisco-based PresenceLearning will begin providing physical, occupational and speech language therapy to Jeffco kids via teleconferencing under a $267,300 contract approved by the school board in December. 

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Or, for public schools following new federal health guidelines, a cheap one.

National prices of food — especially for produce — have been rising steadily, compounded by California’s drought-to-flood pendulum. For Jeffco Public Schools, the price tag for meeting national school-lunch standards has been increasing as well.