As the fall colors come and go, Ignacio Elementary continues to rock this year! The school had a great positive start to the year. We welcomed some new faces that you will see around campus.  

Jennifer Wittrup is teaching 3rd grade this year. She has taught school, mostly in 3rd grade, for 28 plus years! Most of her teaching career was in Indiana. She taught for a short time in Wyoming before moving to Southwest Colorado. She is certified in trauma-informed practices. We are lucky to have a teacher with experience join our staff.  

Ashika Wagner is teaching 1st grade this year. Wagner completed her student teaching experience last year in a kindergarten classroom at IES. She has moved to the community and is doing a great job in her classroom. She got her degree at Fort Lewis College last May.  

Emily Hartley is teaching 3rd grade this year. She also came to us from Fort Lewis College. She is enthusiastic and is doing awesome things with her class. She has built working relationships with her students and loves watching them learn.  

Nicole Margeson is teaching SPED this year to grades 3-5. Nicole has taught for 12 plus years in Southwest Colorado in both Cortez and Dolores. She moved with her husband to Bayfield over the summer and joined our staff. This is her first-year teaching SPED. She is enjoying learning about SPED and working with students to improve math and reading skills.  

Amy Vezeau is a paraprofessional in our SPED department. She was a substitute all last year in the Ignacio Schools and decided to join us full-time. She has built great relationships with the students she helps. We are lucky to have her working with our students.  

Min Luna is a Paraprofessional in our SPED department. She joins us from Chicago, Ill. She has some experience working with preschool students in Chicago. We are excited and happy she moved to Southwest Colorado and has joined our Bobcat Family.  

Aundrea Herrera is a Paraprofessional in our kindergarten classes. She is a lifelong Bobcat! Aundrea graduated from Ignacio High School last May and is taking college classes online to be a teacher someday. We are excited to have her working in the schools and gaining experience towards being a future teacher.  

2024-2025 Performance Rankings: Each year the Colorado Department of Education ranks schools based on the CMAS scores (grades 3-5). Last year at this time we were rated as a school in Priority Improvement (among the lowest-performing schools in the state). Over the school year, we ensured all students had high-quality teachers, put common behavior expectations in place, and worked with grade-level teachers to ensure students were learning and growing academically and emotionally. Teachers met weekly to plan lessons and look at student work to ensure they were learning what was taught to them. Our efforts paid off! Our students grew an average of over 55 percentile in both reading and math. This equates to more than a year’s growth. Some classes grew in the 70 percentile!  We expected to move up in ranking from the CDE. We moved two levels to the top schools. For the 2024-2025 school year, Ignacio Elementary School is rated a Performing School. We still have room to grow and will continue this year.  

This year’s initiatives include Habits of Discussion. This will help our students improve their communication and critical thinking skills. Some of the skills they are working on is to always answer any question in complete sentences, both with oral and written tasks, and giving reasons for their answers based on evidence from the reading or math problems. Parents can help at home by asking students to answer in complete sentences anytime you ask them a question. For example, if you ask them what they would like to watch on TV, have them answer in a complete sentence and give a reason why they picked that show.  

We continue to infuse fun activities for students this year to help keep our learning climate a fun place to be. This includes your Rise and Shine pep assemblies, the AR reading Point Clubs where students can earn pizza parties and trips to Fly High but earning points in AR reading, the NED Show, the Navajo Magician (coming in November), and a schoolwide Read-A-Thon in November. We also have a friendly competition for which classes are reading the most words each week. This has motivated the students to have read over five million words so far this year. We have also recognized over 250 students for going beyond our expectations and being Six Pillar Bobcats. Next week the whole school will be working in homeroom classes to solve a mystery similar to the game CLUE.  

I invite anyone to come visit the school to see all the great things happening at the school this year. It is a great year in Bobcat Country. 

Upcoming events: 

• Oct. 31 Trick or Treating around town – all grades PreK-5th. Thank you to all the agencies and businesses that have agreed to participate. 

• November 5 is our Family Literacy Night from 5:30-7p.m.