Dear Thompson Community:
I hope you are having a terrific spring season. Soon, the final bells will ring throughout our buildings, and another school year will have officially wrapped up. This has been a fantastic school year, with many things to celebrate and many efforts to look forward to as we look ahead. Before we head into the summer weeks, I wanted to highlight a few of the key items from 2023-24:
- Peakview Academy at Conrad Ball opened its doors to students for the first time this past fall. The school is a consolidation of the former Mary Blair Elementary, Monroe Elementary, and Conrad Ball Middle School communities.
- A “wall-breaking” ceremony was hosted for “The Landing,” a new regional shelter that will host unaccompanied youth from throughout our community. Located at the former Monroe Early Childhood building in Loveland, the new shelter is currently under construction and is targeted to open later this year.
- Crews worked hard this school year to wrap up some of the last remaining projects from our 2018 bond program. By utilizing grant awards, bond premium, earned interest, and other key steps, the district was able to increase its $149 million investment into over $208 million in project development and improvements.
- Turner Middle School’s Jessica May was recognized by the Colorado Department of Education as the 2024 Teacher of the Year. In her role, May has represented Colorado teachers and has done terrific work to help promote the importance of public education.
- Each year, Thompson School District students earn millions of dollars in scholarships for their educational plans after high school. Among this year’s winners are Loveland High School seniors Kennedy Layne and Peyton Hendricks, as well as Loveland Classical seniors Grace Hilde and Reese Worley, who have all been selected as Daniels Scholar recipients. In addition, Kennedy was also named a winner of the 2024 Boettcher Scholarship, along with Loveland High School’s Egan Bauersfeld.
- Truscott Elementary School was presented with the State of Colorado’s Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award, and Berthoud Elementary School captured the John Irwin Schools of Excellence Award. The honors were earned based on student assessments completed last spring. Administered each school year, the state’s assessment program is a standards-based process designed to measure student performance at schools throughout Colorado.
- This year, we expanded our Unified Sports program into the middle schools and hosted our first-ever Elementary Unified Sports Day, where amazing young athletes had the opportunity to experience the excitement of participating in a sporting event.
- This year, we celebrated yet another significant increase in our graduation rate, with a 2023 measurement of 91.1% – an increase of 3.5% from 2022. The four-year graduation rate in Thompson has now increased each of the past six years.
- Once again, schools throughout our district celebrated numerous individual and team successes in regional and state athletics and activities.
- In addition, our amazing high school students again earned hundreds of college credits, many industry credentials, and a large number of certifications as they graduate and move on to post-secondary options in higher education, careers, and the military.
As I reflect upon these key moments from our school year, I am reminded once again of how fortunate we are to have such amazing support from our entire TSD community. None of this would be possible without your gift of time and your dedication to TSD. We have so much to look forward to in the coming months and years, and I am very grateful to our community for taking this special journey with us. Have a wonderful summer, and we’ll see you soon for the launch of the 2024-25 school year.
Sincerely,
Dr. Marc Schaffer
Superintendent
Thompson School District