At its meeting on Feb. 4, Archuleta School District (ASD) Superintendent Rick Holt provided the Board of Education (BoE) with a midyear update reviewing district goals, student attendance and behaviors, and student performance.
Holt highlighted three primary goals for the 2025-2026 school year of providing high-quality instruction for all students, grade level standards and student engagement.
Holt explained that ASD has made “decent progress” over the past four years with increasing the number of students exceeding expectations and decreasing the number of students performing well below state expectations.
He noted that has been the case in both math and English language arts studies for students in third to eighth grade.
Holt noted that the high school is looking at PSAT and 11th-grade SAT scores, and that the ninth and 10th grade PSAT scores are “creeping closer and closer to the state average.”
“This year the high school has added PSAT and SAT assessments,” Holt said, explaining that it provides progress monitoring for students before getting to the actual assessment.
Holt also mentioned the district is striving to create a strong collaborative culture amongst students and staff through intentional culture building and social-emotional support.
Holt presented information the district has gathered through the teaching and learning climate survey that is done every other year through the state.
According to that data, in the 2021-2022 school year, 75 percent of staff indicated that ASD was a good place to work and 81 percent stated ASD is a good place to learn. Those figures increased in the 2023-2024 school year, with 91 percent of respondents indicating ASD is a good place to work and 93 percent stating ASD is a good place to learn.
Holt noted that this is also a “good indicator” that the district is retaining its staff.
According to Holt’s presentation, the district-wide turnover rate for the 2023-2024 school year was 9.1 percent with 110 total teachers, including 10 new teachers; the 2024-2025 school year turnover rate was 16.7 percent with 114 total teachers, including 19 new teachers; and the 2025-2026 school year is 13 percent, with 108 total teachers, including 14 new teachers.
Holt noted that ASD has been below the state’s average turnover rate the past three years.
According to Holt’s presentation, the state turnover rate for the 2023-2024 school year was 17.4 percent, 17 percent for the 2024-2025 school year and 16.98 percent for the current school year.
Holt went on to talk about student behavior incidents, noting that, “last year we had a significant decrease in behaviors.”
According to Holt’s presentation, there was a 20 percent overall decrease in documented student behaviors from the 2023-2024 to the 2024-2025 school year.
He also noted that there was a “significant decrease in detrimental student to student interactions,” which includes a 60 percent decrease in bullying, a 67 percent decrease in fighting, a 45 percent decrease in harassment, a 60 percent decrease in threats or physical attacks, a 57 percent decrease in drug/alcohol/tobacco violations, and a 35 percent decrease in in-/out-of-school suspensions.
Holt also mentioned that, through January of this year, 74 total incidents have been reported, which is a 43 percent decrease from the same timeframe of last school year.
He commented that the district could absolutely do better with getting the total number of incidents down, “but we’re making progress.”
Holt went on to discuss chronic absenteeism rates in the district, explaining that the rate shown in his presentation had improved by about 4 percent since the report was conducted.
“We’ve been addressing chronic absenteeism,” he said, noting that chronic absenteeism means missing more than 10 percent of days, or not more than one day every two weeks.
Holt explained that 52 percent of ASD students are present at least 93 percent of the time, “which is great.”
According to the presentation, 12 percent of ASD students are “potential” chronic absentees, meaning those students are present anywhere from 90 to 93 percent of the time.
ASD has a chronic absenteeism rate of 35 percent, according to the presentation, but Holt noted that rate has since improved to 31 percent.
He explained that he “may not have the same concern” for a student present 89.9 percent of the time compared to students who are in the low 80s, or even lower.
Holt noted that the Pagosa Family School is included in the district’s chronic absenteeism rate, as those students are also included in the district’s enrollment numbers.
He also mentioned that ASD’s chronic absenteeism rate last year was 39.5, and the state’s was around 29 percent.
Holt noted that excused absences still count toward a chronic absentee rate.
“It was shocking that as a district we were at 39.5 percent chronic absenteeism across the entire district. It was shocking,” he said.
clayton@pagosasun.com
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