Of all Thanksgiving celebrations of our past, this year may be a season when many of us can more empathetically relate to a few of the challenges of the first settlers. Those settlers had to overcome continuous hardships, illnesses, and movement away from the familiar luxuries of their past as they navigated settlement in the new world. I hope this Thanksgiving season that you are all able to take from their example a moment to find reasons to celebrate, relax, and count the blessings that life has brought this year.

During this pandemic, we are thankful and encouraged that the school district continues to be one of the safest places for students and adults to spend their time. We will continue to work hard to ensure that the health practices encouraged by public health are being followed. While we know that COVID cases will happen, we also know that we are providing some of the best working environments within the community for safeguarding our staff and students.

As we experienced this past week, moving to remote learning provides challenges for the educational experiences we offer. Remote learning encourages community intermingling while parents and staff work to make adjustments for this modality of school that may differ day to day. Therefore, Lake County School District looks forward to welcoming our students back on November 30^th as we will continue to operate in a yellow-hybrid mode until local public health informs us that this is no longer the best step forward.

A movement to “red or remote” learning may be necessary in the cases of specific quarantines or significant absences that require a temporary movement to this type of learning for set groups of students/staff. We will continue to notify our families of these changes as they arise.

On November 30^th we will not have staffing available to run the 2^nd day support Project Dream program for West Park Elementary school. Lake County Intermediate School is not impacted and will have Project Dream programming on November 30^th.  All other programming in the district will resume as regularly scheduled on Monday November 30^th.

Additionally, each school has been working on improved hybrid plans. The proposed hybrid plans consider the feedback of the listening tour and will include proposals that reduce the need for substitutes and quarantining for the second semester as well as work to improve academic and social experiences for students.

Over the past week and a half we have continued to work to increase our substitute pool. Our application to recruit substitutes will remain open and available on the district website. Future substitute training sessions will be hosted as needed as we wish to continue growing our list of available subs. Please help us to recruit additional substitutes to grow our sub pool. Reach out to Bunny Taylor at 719-486-6805 or btaylor@lakecountyschools.net for more information.

We thank you for your own efforts during the past week and half to support your child’s learning experience. We hope that you enjoy the much deserved break from Google classroom, class meets, and online submissions that you have all earned.

With warm wishes for a restful Thanksgiving,

Bethany Massey

Lake County School District Superintendent

A huge Thank you to the Food Service staff at Lake County School District! They have been providing meals for students throughout the summer, school being in session and in remote phase.

This week along with the regular meals, they also prepared 400 boxes of complete Thanksgiving dinners for our families.

Thank you to all the food service workers for helping to provide meals to our students! Amazing work!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

There is more need than ever for blood donations, as blood banks are not being replenished as much as usual due to the COVID-19 situation. LCHS has conferred with public health leaders working to facilitate a blood drive here in Leadville to assist with this need.

The high school has worked with both Vitalant, the blood donation center, and Lake County Public Health Agency to ensure precautions are taken to protect donors, including following all social distancing guidelines.

A link to the Vitalant website is here if you have additional questions about their procedures and the extra precautions they are taking with the COVID-19 virus. Potential donors who are not feeling well should not attend the blood drive and should not plan to donate. Blood donors are not tested for Coronavirus. Click here for more information on donating and the Coronavirus.

Walk-in appointments will not be available on this day.  You must sign up for a donation appointment in advance through the Vitalant scheduling system.
To sign up to donate, click here and then click on Donate Now in the upper right corner or email Bunny Taylor at btaylor@lakecountyschools.net.

Important Details for Donors

• School will be in session. Donors will be kept separate from any students who are in the school. 
• Donors must park in the North Parking Lot (off 6th street). Map is provided below.
• Donors will walk from the North Parking Lot along the west side of the building and enter directly into the Gym from a set of doors on the west side of the school. 
• Donors should plan to maintain 6’ physical distance from one another during time on campus. Wearing personal non-medical face masks is also required.
• Donors have the opportunity to wait in their cars. If donors share a cell phone number when registering, Vitalant staff will call or text when ready to begin a donor’s medical interview.
• Bathrooms in the school will NOT be available for donors. 
• All donors will exit the same way they came in.

In the fall of 2021, the Lake County School District expects to open our new pre-k through second grade building. This building is located just north of the current West Park Elementary site. West Park Elementary was built when the town of Climax incorporated into the Leadville area in 1962-1963 to accommodate the influx of students because Margaret J. Pitts Elementary was at capacity.  

The new building will also house The Center Early Childhood Program. The Center opened its doors in 1988 to bring child care, preschool, and family services together. 

We have an opportunity to explore if the Leadville community wishes to re-name the new facility.  An initial survey was conducted, which identified that a single name for the whole building was preferred. 

Keeping the current name West Park Elementary was favored, but the name Lake County Elementary also received considerable support because this name might better represent the whole community that the building serves. 

The building naming committee decided to conduct this second survey to gather more data from the community.  This survey will close at Noon on December 15th.  This data will be used to support a name recommendation to the Lake County Board of Education.

The Lake County Board of Education will make the final naming decision.

Thank you so much for taking the time to offer your input – it is so helpful when making an important decision like this for our community!

Survey in English:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/C2LQXL9

Survey in Spanish:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CMZ2HQ6