Las Animas School District News

For the past 20 years Las Animas Elementary School’s hallway has been a passage into the life of independent reading for students, inspiring them to read as they journey through different worlds. The students of LAES are immersed in the creativity, art, and hard work of our teachers and staff who design, create, and decorate sections of the main hall. This is our school’s tracker for students’ progress toward their individualized goal reached by independently reading, then earning points after accurately passing a comprehension quiz on Accelerated Reader.

Accelerated Reader (AR) is the program used to manage student data and measure the accuracy of the AR tests they’ve taken. This program also helps our students discover their interests, read books that are on their independent level, and broadens their range of exposure from fiction to nonfiction to articles to biblical text. Using the walls in the hall, students’ progress is marked by a “token” that represents them, as it is hands-on, develops ownership of their growth, and celebrates of the accomplishment of reading at home on a daily basis.

In the numbers:

• Last year there were 30,466 checked-out books, so in the 20 years the AR Hallway has supported approximately 609,320 check-outs.

• 225 students per year reading an average of 30 minutes a night for 145 school days is 978,750 minutes read..that’s almost a million minutes of reading!

• Finally, the total number of life lessons, memorable characters, historical tales, informative articles, or living the imaginary life of inspirational heroes is immeasurable.

This has forever changed the lives and futures of our students. “The more you read, the smarter you get.” Please stop by our school and stroll the hall, take in the jungle life, and see school through the eyes of our students.

For the past decade, Las Animas School District has paid special attention to student attendance. There is a great deal of evidence in research that the first step to success at anything is showing up! Each month, students with perfect attendance are recognized with a simple incentive - either a coupon for a free DQ cone or choice from a prize box. In addition, classrooms work together to spell out "Attendance Counts" by earning a letter each day that all students are present. At the end of every month, the grade with the highest percentage of attendance is awarded the traveling "Big A" trophy. These efforts have been successful as the 2024-25 attendance rate for LASD was 93%, while the state average was 91.4%

The CSU extension office has been a huge contribution to our community outreach. LAHS has been given the opportunity to have our food science classes become food safety certified and our health classes First Aid and CPR certified. These certifications are taught by Ariel Eddings, a member of the CSU extension building and the Bent County EMS team for First Aid and CPR.

With the continued relationships built between Mrs. Lockhart, the school, and the community, it has been determined that putting effort into our youth makes our town a better place. These programs will be taught year after year as it brings joy to our students and connects them further within our community.

LAHS has added a new concurrent enrollment instructor! Mr. Legario has been approved to teach Intro to Statistics and College Algebra. This brings our total concurrent enrollment course offerings to 10 courses, which also includes 4 English courses: Composition I, Composition II, Intro to Literature, and Public Speaking; 3 History courses: US History I, US History II, and Colorado History, and 1 Political Science course: American Government. Concurrent enrollment courses are college level courses taught by teachers we have on staff in our building. Concurrent enrollment is a type of dual enrollment course, which is defined as a course that counts as both high school and college credit. With this addition, we have 25 students taking a total of 126 dual enrollment courses this semester.

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