Thursday, April 16, 2015 Page 3The Chronicle-News Trinidad, Colorado

EducationACHIEVEMENT & RECOGNITION

Trinidad State students honored at Denver event as Community College ‘Rising Stars’By Greg Boyce, Communications DirectorTrinidad State Junior College

DENVER – Select students from each of the Community Colleges in Colorado were honored at a luncheon in Denver on April 7, 2015, by the Colorado Community College System. Included in the group of “Rising Stars” were Danielle Armstrong from Trin-idad State’s Valley Campus in Alamosa and Shane Boice, from the Trinidad Campus.

Danielle is an exceptional student from the San Luis Valley. She’s Vice President of the Student Government Association and serves as the Legislative Liaison to the Student State Advisory Council in the Colo-rado Community College System. A hard-working wife and mother of young children, Danielle also recently represented Colorado college students at the National Student Advocacy Conference in Washington D.C. and has been asked to serve on the National Leadership Council. After graduating from Trinidad State next year, Danielle plans to continue her education at Adams State Uni-

versity in Alamosa. Gunsmithing Student Shane Boice was

also honored at the luncheon. Now at the end of his first year in the demanding gun-smithing program he still finds time to stay active on the Trinidad Campus. He’s also a residence hall assistant and a positive force on campus. When he found that a group of students weren’t happy with internet speeds at the residence halls, which ham-pered homework assignments, he studied the housing contract and monitored actual internet speeds being delivered. When he found the data speeds didn’t come up to the level the contract promised, he brought his findings to the Student Government organi-zation on campus.

Shane regularly attends student govern-ment meetings, is involved in the Student Activities Committee and constantly comes up with fun ideas to engage students. He spends time at Trinidad State’s Prator Gun Range and has been known to take along fellow students, instructing them in proper shooting techniques.

Photos courtesy of Greg Boyce / Trinidad StateDr. Nancy McCallin, top left, Colorado Community College System President, Rising Star Danielle Armstrong, center, and Trinidad State Junior College President Dr. Carmen Simone at an April 7 luncheon in Denver. Gunsmithing Student and Rising Star Shane Boice in the machine shop at Trinidad State Junior College.

CEA

Educators push high standards amidst high poverty in the San Luis Valley By Mike WetzelCommunications DirectorColorado Education Association

SAN LUIS, Colo. – This small town near the Colorado border with New Mexico has already made a name for itself. San Luis has the distinction of being the oldest con-tinuously occupied town in the state. The town was celebrating another distinction when the Colorado Education Association visited Centennial K-12, honoring a student wrestler with a school assembly for a sec-ond-place finish in the state.

The school’s wrestling coach, Gilbert Apodaca, has ideas to further distinguish Centennial and San Luis beyond the mat. Apodaca, a member of Centennial Educa-tion Association, is the school’s lone high school math teacher, and his employer, Centennial School District R-1, is one of the state’s integration districts that first made the shift to teaching the Colorado Academ-ic Standards for its students.

“I think it’s one of the best things we could have done,” said Apodaca. “We’re ex-pecting kids to be able to describe the math-ematics, understand the mathematics, and see how the mathematics are applied. It’s a big change, and we’re hearing feedback from our students and families about how rigorous it is. It’s a struggle, but we want our kids to have access to that struggle. It’s our job as teachers to make it meaningful and give them opportunity.”

‘Struggle’ is not a new concept for stu-dents growing up in the San Luis Valley. Costilla County is among the poorest in Colorado. Centen-nial K-12 serves a growing number of families set-ting in undevel-oped areas, some going without electricity and running water. Valley educators explored poverty issues plaguing area families at a recent confer-ence hosted by the Ethnic Minority Advisory Council of CEA’s San Luis UniServ Unit. Centen-nial Principal Curtis Garcia was a confer-ence speaker and acknowledges extreme poverty has changed the nature of school work here.

“We’re not just focused on teaching, learning and academics, but really think-ing about the whole child. So we’re con-cerned about access to health care, to men-

tal health care, to other kinds of services that these kids need if they’re going to be able to function and succeed in school,” Garcia told CEA. “As a small rural district, we’ve taken on a lot of that initiative, a lot of that work, to identify families and help them get access to services.”

“In the classroom, you know who isn’t engaged and it’s a challenge to figure out why,” said Apodaca. “Is something going on at home? Have they had a good meal since yesterday at lunch?

“It’s not that the kid doesn’t want to try,” Apodaca added. “There’s something going on and we have to get to the root of it. So we have to dig deep, get to know these kids and see what’s going on, see where we can help them out.”

As Apodaca works to meet the needs of his students well beyond the classroom, he’s going through as much training and

conditioning as his wrestlers to perfect his professional practice. With support from the Colorado Education Initiative and the Gates Foundation, Apodaca entered into a national math design collaborative to meet math instructors around the country. They share ideas on what’s working well and he introduces the latest cutting-edge strate-gies on math instruction into his small-town classroom.

Born and raised in San Luis and him-self a graduate of Centennial, Apodaca is unapologetic for pushing his students to reach high standards even when he knows many of them suffer in high poverty. “I firmly believe to give these kids an oppor-tunity to actually succeed in their lifetime, we can’t lower the rigor. We cannot go down to their level. We need to give them an opportunity to succeed in life by raising the rigor... without it, our kids are going to fall behind and it’s going to continue the poverty cycle.”

Garcia enjoys empowering his teachers to push beyond what most would expect from a poor, rural district and create more authentic, relevant learning experiences for Centennial students. “I see it as an op-portunity for us in school to be able to own up to our responsibilities to think about the whole child,” said Garcia. “It’s that impetus that drives us to create change in our community and in our state to really get the resources in place to help these kids learn. The rigorous standards set the expec-tation.”

“It’s a rough area, but I wouldn’t be happier working in any other place in the state,” said Apodaca. “A lot of our kids come through some big challenges. I know for a fact they can do it, and if they come out of here, they’ll be some of the best out there.”

Photos courtesy of CEACentennial’s Principal Curtis Garcia, left, and the school’s wrestling coach, Gilbert Apodaca talk with the CEA at Centennial K-12 in San Luis.

Photo courtesy of Mileene Sanchez / The Aguilar School District

Aguilar Students of the Week for April 13 Back Row, L-R are Valente Holguin (Preschool), Adison Canales (Kindergarten) and Aria Broach (2nd). Front Row, L-R: Vincent Garcia (1st), Roan Broach (3rd), Reina Fountain (6th) and Franch-esca Porras (5th).

Associated Press

The Colorado Board of Health Wednesday passed new immunization rules that officials say strengthen school policies and will im-prove the state’s low vaccination rates.

The new rules, effective July 2016, will require parents seeking non-medical exemp-tions from school and child-care vaccine re-quirements to submit them more than once. They will be required at each age when recom-mended vaccines are due for pre-kindergart-ners and then annually from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Currently, the state requires submission of an exemption request just once.

Gov. John Hickenlooper said in a written statement that the new rules will strengthen immunization rates in the state, which are among the lowest in the nation.

“Yet we know our work is not done,” Hick-enlooper said, “and will continue to work with the Board of Health, medical community and our state agencies to ensure parents have the

facts about immunizations.”States with strengthened exemption poli-

cies have lower overall exemption rates, ac-cording to research cited by the Colorado De-partment of Public Health and Environment. Colorado’s non-medical exemption rate is 4.6 percent, compared with a national average of 1.8 percent.

And children whose parents claim exemp-tions are more likely to get and transmit vac-cine-preventable diseases, health officials said.

Also, beginning July 2016, schools and child-care centers will have to report annually on immunization and exemption rates to the health department, which will make the infor-mation public.

Health officials said the reports will allow parents concerned about the risks of vaccine-preventable diseases to make decisions on where they send their kids.

CDPHE director Dr. Larry Wolk said the health department will continue to work with educators and parents to encourage higher vaccination rates.

Colorado strengthens vaccination rules, adding exemption requirements

HEALTH & WELLNESS