Teams from Colorado Department of Education and the University of Virginia visited four schools in the Montezuma-Cortez School Re-1 School District to assess improvement.

The University of Virginia is the district’s “improvement accountability partner.”

“Basically that consisted with meeting with the principals and evaluating their 90-day plans and evaluating how we are doing as a district,” said Lori Haukeness, superintendent of Montezuma-Cortez Re-1 School District.

The team visited Montezuma-Cortez High School, Cortez Middle School, Mesa Elementary School and Manaugh Elementary School and met with district leaders during their visit on Oct. 2-3.

“They gave us some 360-degree feedback,” Carol Mehesy, director of School Improvements and Grants said.

“They notice that we have made some progress in ways to market ourselves better to get out nationally to go see different recruiting fairs and that type of thing and kind of hone our messaging and then also say that is an area that they want us to continue to focus on and find creative ways to recruit and retain teachers.”

The team identified a few ways in which the district can improve.

According to a district news release, the improvements are:

Expanding efforts to recruit and retain qualified teachers.Providing more coaching and support for principals and teachers.Focusing more on student growth in math across the district. During the visit, Nicole Monet, the district’s school improvement partner from the CDE, told the district that it was eligible to apply for a reconsideration of the district’s accreditation level.

If approved, the Montezuma-Cortez Re-1 School District could be “off the clock” and upgraded to “improvement’ status by 2018.

“We are very confident that the state department of education will approve our request and that the district will be ‘off the clock’ this year,” Haukeness said in a news release.