Elevating Student Success

As Adams 12 Five Star Schools approaches its 75th anniversary one year from now, we have much to celebrate! As we begin to look forward to the 2024-2025 school year, we are thankful for the partnership we have with our Five Star community and are excited to build on our collective successes in the year ahead.

Five Star Proud

We have a lot to be Five Star Proud and thankful about in Adams 12 Five Star Schools. Our students and staff are demonstrating amazing growth and success across our 50-plus schools. I’ll highlight just a few indicators of that success.

• Reaching an all-time high, the district celebrated an on-time graduation rate of 86.4 percent for the Class of 2023. This was an increase of 2.5 percent compared to the previous year and more than three percent higher than the statewide average.
• Five Star Schools continues to see more students taking, and receiving high scores on Advanced Placement (AP) exams. For 2024, the district saw an all-time high 71 percent of AP exams taken received a score of 3 or greater.
• Pathways Future Center’s Class of 2023 recorded the school’s all-time high on-time graduation rate of 71.2 percent. Pathways is an alternative education campus which offers a small and supportive learning environment that models a professional business atmosphere.
• Celebrating two of our nationally recognized STEM schools - Northglenn High School and STEM Launch - for being recognized as a Project Lead The Way's (PLTW) Distinguished Programs. Students engage in hands-on, collaborative problem solving focused on real-world challenges, allowing them to use and stretch their imaginations in brand new ways.
• In its first year, the district’s Newcomer Center served 188 newcomer high school students, with 9 graduates, all of whom moved to the United States at the start of the school year, accepted to postsecondary institutions. Located at Thornton High School, it provides academic, social-emotional and extracurricular opportunities to recently arrived immigrant and refugee students and families.

Blueprint: Investing in Student Success

Blueprint is a community-driven plan that defines and prioritizes the needs of the district, as they relate to the continued implementation of the district’s strategic plan called ELEVATE. Through a collaborative process, investment opportunities were identified that address what the community values and wants to see the district provide for students.

Through Blueprint, the district looks to reenvision the school environment where both operational and building investments work together to create the best possible experience for students, staff and families.

There are two primary investment areas – facilities and programming– that the Five Star community has helped the district identify. Additional funding is needed to address the priorities in both investment areas and the district may ultimately ask voters to decide on how best to fund them.

Facilities Investment Areas

• Enhance school safety
• Replace aging roofs, heating, cooling, and plumbing systems
• Repair and improve school grounds
• Rebuild and modernize aging schools
• Expand career and technical educational facilities

Programming Investment Areas

• Provide competitive wages to attract and keep high-quality teachers and staff 

• Expand access to more enrichment classes for elementary students, including adding computer science at all schools

• Provide exploratory career and technical education (CTE) classes in middle school allowing students to discover their passion and strengths at an earlier age

• Offer new hands-on, career-focused courses for high school students equipping them with skills aligned with emerging industries

As part of its Blueprint planning process, the Board of Education will consider placing ballot measures that would ask voters to approve funding for these investments in November 2024.

You can learn more at www.adams12.org/funding-proposals