Schools in Pueblo County are in greater need of access to school-based health care compared with the rest of the state, according to a report from the Colorado Health Institute.
The report conducted an analysis on the needs assessments of health care access on school campuses across Colorado.
The authors of the report found schools that serve predominately students of color and are located in rural areas and underserved urban communities had a greater need for health care access compared with schools that are predominately white, due to systemic racial disparities and policies that have historically marginalized them. We looked through school data of all the regions and counties in Colorado. The key takeaways from the data is we see the need for expanded access for care in rural Colorado, stark disparities in urban Colorado as well as racial ethnic disparities, said Julia Char Gilbert, research analyst at the Colorado Health Institute, who co-authored the report.
State lawmakers have proposed a bill that would suspend Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) testing for this year.
The bill would allow state education officials to request a waiver from the federal government to suspend its standardized tests. The U.S. Department of Education recently ruled that states should continue with standardized testing despite the restrictions of instructional learning due to the pandemic. We believe that standardized assessments this spring would fail to fairly assess student achievement and growth and would result in an additional loss of instructional time, said Dalton Sprouse, communications director for Pueblo School District 60, in a statement.
Pueblo Community College announced the creation of a new chapter for the Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education (FAME) on Monday during a press conference.
FAME, a national organization that provides technical training to students interested in manufacturing, has 37 chapters across the United States. The organization has an 85% job placement rate nationally for students in the program. They will have a lot of hands-on labs in electrical systems, mechanical systems, fluid power, hydraulics, lots of soft skills and professional development, said Jennifer Sherman, PCC s dean of business and advanced technology. They re going to be mentored, working three days a week and making a very good wage for a manufacturer who is sponsoring them.
Education in Pueblo has changed dramatically over the last couple years with new charter and online schools popping up around the city.
The new schools are part of the local public school districts and offer new opportunities for students to get a different style education. One of those schools is Villa Bella Expeditionary School, located next to CSU Pueblo.
Started in 2019, the school is currently available to students in grades K-4, but has plans to expand in the near future. Next year we ll expand to K-5. Recently, District 70 has authorized us to add grades sixth, seventh and eighth, said Logan Gogarty, executive director and founder of Villa Bella. The idea would be to build another building and then have our fifth graders move up into that sixth grade track.