In Focus

Dear Thompson Community:

When I think about the strength and success of the Thompson School District, I immediately think about the word “Community” with a capital “C.” I use a capital letter to represent the all-inclusiveness of our entire Community that works together to ensure the support of our nearly 16,000 students, who depend on our Community to create a robust and effective school experience. For me, our Community is made up of our parents and guardians, our staff, our district residents and our local businesses.

Our parents and guardians are a necessary and important part of our Community. Parents and guardians help support our students by attending school events and special activities, staying engaged in the academic and social/emotional lives of students and showing an active interest in what students are doing each and every day at school. Parents and guardians serve as chaperones on school field trips, are members of PTA/PTO organizations and even volunteer their time at school for activities and events. Finally, parents and guardians serve on school and district committees to provide input and thinking around the important work we are doing in the district.

The Thompson School District staff team is made up of more than 2,100 professionals who are “all in” to help support our students before, during and after the school day. Our transportation staff and crossing guards help to ensure that students arrive and depart safely each day.  Our school personnel, including front office staff, food service workers, teachers, support staff, paraprofessionals, custodians and school administrators, create school environments that foster safety, a sense of belonging and a positive culture while also offering strong instructional and cocurricular programs. The behind-the-scenes staff members, from our Learning Services and Human Resources departments to Instructional Technology, Facilities, Communication and Business Services, also support our students and district by playing key roles in the daily operation of Thompson School District.

Our Community is made up of citizens within five cities and towns as well as unincorporated property in Larimer, Weld and Boulder counties. Nearly 75% of our Community does not have students who currently attend our schools. Yet, we depend on this large segment of our population to help support our schools and students through engagement and participation. Community members volunteer their time at our schools to help students as academic tutors and reading buddies as well as lend their expertise in areas of interest and talent. Community members also attend school concerts, plays, athletic competitions and other school-wide events which directly support and benefit our students.  Community members serve on school and district committees, share feedback with the schools and the district and remain engaged and interested in our work.

Finally, our business Community directly supports our students in so many important and tangible ways. For example, it has partnered directly with the district on our Career and Technical Education initiatives. Businesses also provide perspective, expertise, feedback and support when it comes to developing programs and facilities to support workforce readiness. Our businesses not only generously provide resources and time, they also invest in our students by hosting apprenticeship and internship experiences. We recognize that our business Community is a necessary and valuable part of our Thompson School District Community. 

Our Community partners provide extraordinary support to surround our students with the opportunity to be college, career and Community-ready, while also being invested in the success of our district. It truly takes a “big-C” Community to ensure the success of our district…and we thank you!

Sincerely,
Dr. Marc Schaffer
Superintendent
Thompson School District

Dear Thompson School District Students, Parents, Staff and Community Members,

To open the month of October, Thompson School District symbolically broke ground at the new Career and Technical Education (CTE) Center at the Van Buren campus. I mention that this was a symbolic groundbreaking, as work is already well underway to transform the facility into a state-of-the-art venue to expand and grow our already successful CTE programs here in our district. Today, I would like to provide some information on what I like to call the “three P’s of CTE:” Pathways, Partnerships and Programming.

TSD is excited about the development of the four career pathways to be offered at the new CTE Center, which is opening in the fall semester of 2020. The pathways are Advanced Manufacturing, Computer Science, Construction Skilled Trades and Health Care.

We have met and listened to local business and industry members by holding numerous advisory committee sessions to build out and develop these two-year program pathways. Each pathway will offer at least one industry credential, college credit (Aims Community College and Front Range Community College), and core academic credit in English, math and/or science. Each pathway will also contain a work-based learning opportunity such as an internship or apprenticeship, as well as multiple exit points for students to join the workforce, whether as a high school graduate, while taking industry specific college courses or as a college graduate.

We also heard from our community about the importance of soft, or essential, skills for our students in developing their career, college and community readiness. This matches well with Strive 2025 and our Portrait of a TSD Graduate. Embedded in all courses will be the four C’s: Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking and Creativity. Self-advocacy and citizen competencies will also be applied within courses and mastered upon completion of the work-based learning component in each pathway.

Finally, we will continue to look at developing and creating pathways for students at our middle and elementary school sites to explore CTE programming and learn more about opportunities that will exist as they move from our elementary to secondary schools.

As we prepare our students to be college, career and community ready, we are also mindful that the CTE program will create authentic and meaningful experiences that will serve them well as they graduate from TSD and head into future endeavors. We once again thank you for your support and trust in the work that we are doing. We recognize that the generosity of our community through the passage of last year’s Bond and Mill initiatives has allowed us to offer programming and experiences for our students that will serve them well in the future. We see our work within CTE not only as a way to support our students, but also as a way to give back to our community by creating a highly skilled and talented workforce.

We are excited and energized by the work ahead!

Sincerely,
Dr. Marc Schaffer
Superintendent of Schools
Thompson School District

Dear Thompson School District Students, Parents, Staff and Community Members,

I hope the beginning of the new academic year has gone well for you. We were so excited to welcome students back into the buildings and we are looking forward to an amazing 2019-2020 school year.

A critical priority of ours is to ensure physical and emotional safety for each of our students, staff, and families. To assist with this effort, TSD has created a three-pronged approach.

First, our generous taxpayers have entrusted us with bond dollars to support additional learning space and help keep students physically safe. Second, additional resources are helping ensure increased access to safe schools through the hiring of positions to support the social and emotional learning needs of our students. Third, a prominent focus area of our district’s “Strive 2025” Strategic Plan is the importance of an inclusive and supportive culture. That focus area features plans to ensure that all students, staff and family members are guaranteed safe and inclusive learning environments.

While our plans are strong, we know that your children have likely heard about tragic incidents around our world and in our country over the past several months that have targeted diverse groups of people based on race, religion and national origin. Please take time to listen to your children when they express concerns or worries about a lack of safety. Encourage your children to speak up and let us know if there is any unsafe or unacceptable behavior happening in their school, especially behavior that targets students based on any aspect of their cultural diversity. Invite them to speak with a trusted adult at home or school, such as a teacher, school counselor, school resource officer or principal.

An additional tool that may assist them is “Safe2Tell,” an anonymous resource that allows students and families to report bullying, harassment and other safety and security concerns. For more information and to access the service, please visit safe2tell.org. Each tip that is submitted via the program is investigated by officials in a timely manner.

For more information on the steps TSD has taken to help ensure safety throughout our district, and to view a list of useful resources, please visit thompsonschools.org/safety.

In addition, TSD’s Board of Education has adopted a policy that governs bullying prevention and education. The policy and the associated regulations can be viewed by clicking HERE and HERE.

Thank you again for your support of all of our students and families.

Sincerely,
Dr. Marc Schaffer
Superintendent
Thompson School District

Greetings, Thompson School District Students, Parents, Staff and Community Members,

Welcome to the 2019-2020 school year! In a few short days, we will welcome approximately 16,000 students back to school. We also welcome back our 2,000-plus member district staff, most of whom have been hard at work in recent weeks eagerly preparing for our new school year. These are exciting times for Thompson School District and I am optimistic that our students will have their most successful, productive and memorable school year yet.

The 2019-2020 school year will bring many transformational changes to our district, and I would like to highlight a few of them for you now.

On the curriculum front, we will be launching our Ready Gen English/Language Arts curriculum at the K-5 level, as well as the Big Ideas Middle School Math program in grades 6-8. Our high schools will be exploring and piloting a new math program in grades 9-12 with a launch of this new curriculum in the 2020-2021 school year. Our commitment to a Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum for all of our students requires us to systematize and align our curricula across K-12. 

With the completion of Phase I construction, our Early Childhood Center at Stansberry opens this fall with five completed classrooms. Our early childhood program is consistently recognized at the state and national levels for offering outstanding programming and services for our youngest learners. In TSD, we recognize that academic and school success begins in early childhood. With the expansion and enhancement of our early childhood programming, we will continue to make school readiness a top priority in TSD. Following the conclusion of Phase 2 construction work next summer, our Early Childhood Center at Stansberry will be fully open and operational.  We are also very excited to launch full-day kindergarten programming throughout the district.

The social/emotional and mental health well-being of our students will continue to be a focus and priority for us as we head into the 2019-2020 school year. We have added and are continuing to add school counselors, paraprofessionals and other personnel to directly support our students on our campuses.

In addition to work at the Early Childhood Center, summer bond efforts have focused on roofing projects at a number of our school buildings. Security infrastructure, technology upgrades (including bandwidth expansion) and health/life/safety building improvements are also included in the expansive construction work that has taken place over the summer. Later this school year, we will break ground on our new PK-8 campus on the eastern side of our district, as well as launch the construction of our Career and Technical Education Center on our Van Buren site. 

Perhaps the most significant event in TSD is the unveiling of our new Strategic Plan – Strive 2025. Over the coming weeks and months, we will be sharing with our community our focused direction and priorities as a district. Strive 2025 encompasses the areas of student achievement, an inclusive and supportive culture, strong human talent and fiscal responsibility. Together, these areas will ensure that our district is one of continued excellence and distinction. 

As I hope you can see, we are working hard to ensure that Thompson School District will be a destination district where the student experience is at the center of what we do. As always, we will continue to build upon and seek out community and business partnerships to help support the work we are achieving. These are exciting times for this district and we will continue to build upon our successes while continuing to earn the trust and support of our community. For updates throughout the school year, please consider following me on Twitter @tsdDrMarc.

Thank you for your support,
Dr. Marc Schaffer
Superintendent
Thompson School District

Greetings Thompson School District Students, Parents, Staff and Community Members:

May is upon us and so are the final days of the 2018-19 school year. This has been a phenomenal year and one that has seen an incredible number of accomplishments and successes within Thompson School District. At the start of the year, we identified four key priorities to focus on within TSD:

• Exceptional Student Achievement — with an emphasis on improving graduation rates, focusing on early literacy and offering a rigorous, coherent and relevant educational program for our students
• Social Emotional Safety and School Security
• Recruiting, Attracting and Retaining best-in-class employees in Thompson School District
• Improving the image of the district, securing stronger community partnerships and increasing positive messaging and communications within the TSD community

As we emerge, we have much to celebrate and be proud of. We also have exciting work ahead of us as we continue to refine, shape and enhance the educational experiences we want for our 16,000 students.

While there are many things I could highlight as our successes and accomplishments, I would like to focus on these top-ten achievements:

• The successful passage of a $149 million bond and $13.9 million mill levy override. These initiatives have allowed the district to address maintenance backlog issues, improve building infrastructure, create additional space at our Berthoud schools, fund a new PreK-8 school on the eastern side of our district, address safety concerns, upgrade technology, provide for curriculum updates and materials and provide more competitive salaries for our employees.
• The investment and deployment of over $1.5 million in technology upgrades and infrastructure into all of our schools
• The re-purposing of Van Buren Elementary as our new Career Technical Education (CTE) center to open in the Fall of 2020
• The re-purposing of Stansberry Elementary as our new Early Childhood Education (ECE) center to partially open in the Fall of 2019
• The establishment of a new middle school mathematics and unified elementary literacy curricula to be launched in the Fall of 2019
• The expansion of our School Resource Officer (SRO) program in all of our secondary schools
• The creation and soon-to-be implemented new Strategic Plan for Thompson School District
• The expansion of social-emotional personnel support in our elementary and secondary buildings, coming in the form of additional and enhanced staffing to support our students and our schools
• The purposeful leveraging of student voice through the creation of district student advisory committees
• The expanded partnerships, forums, outreach and communication with the TSD business and at-large communities

To our graduating seniors — Congratulations! We are so proud of you. We are excited for the next chapters in your life, whether it be college, the workforce, the military or anything else you choose to do. We are hopeful that we have played an important part in your development and we look forward to hearing great things about what you will most assuredly accomplish in the years ahead.

To our returning students and staff – Enjoy your summer! We are excited that you will return next year. Please enjoy your summer and engage in pursuits that you will find most fulfilling – be it work, play, learning, travel and/or rest.

And to our community – Thank you for being valuable and necessary partners and for entrusting us to serve our students and our community. The future of Thompson School District continues to be bright and our potential is limitless and exciting. We appreciate your support and your partnership.

In closing, this has been an incredible year for TSD. We will build upon the optimism and trust that the community has provided this year. Have a wonderful and enriching summer. We will see you all in August for what promises to be another transformational year for Thompson School District.

Sincerely,
Dr. Marc Schaffer
Superintendent
Thompson School District

Greetings Thompson School District Students, Staff, Parents and Community Members:

As I enter my 25th year in public education, I am still learning and evolving in my leadership. I have been a classroom teacher, a dean, an assistant principal and principal, a director of schools and an assistant superintendent all before securing this superintendent position.  One thing that I know for certain is that leveraging student voice is absolutely necessary and critical in order to be in-touch and responsive to student needs.  In my first year in TSD, I have created four key opportunities to leverage student voice in authentic and meaningful ways. Through these experiences and activities, I am better able to understand and include students as key stakeholders in our decision-making in the district, as well as directly incorporate their voice and ideas into how we better serve our students.

Student Advisory Groups

One way to remain in touch with the needs of students is to simply talk with them. Far too often, educational leaders talk about kids, talk around kids and think about what kids need and want. Perhaps the path of least resistance is to simply talk with kids. This year, I have started three student advisory groups – one each for high school, middle school and elementary students. Each building principal selects 2-3 students from each school to meet with me on a regular basis to provide insight and perspective about what life is like as a student. These rich conversations have yielded great information, perspective and ideas that I can take forward to my leadership team and principals. Topics have ranged from school lunch programs and passing period times to student engagement in classrooms, grading policies and curricular offerings. 

Shadow a Student Day

In December, all members of my Leadership Cabinet had the opportunity to spend a half day shadowing a student and experiencing what a day-in-the-life of an elementary, middle or high schooler is all about. I shadowed a senior at one of our high schools and followed her through her morning schedule. Perhaps there is no better way to authentically experience what our students experience unless you actually have the chance to walk in their shoes. The experiences gained through these shadowing events provide great perspective and a true glimpse into what our students get to experience. The visibility of senior leadership in our schools and classrooms also sends an important message to the school communities—that what is taking place in these buildings matters.  

Meeting with Student Council Leaders

From December through February, I met with student leadership at each of our secondary schools by attending a student council meeting. As “elected officials” at each building site, these students represent student voice and student governance. I recognize that student leaders have opinions and ideas that can often be brilliant and revolutionary. By taking the time to engage in conversations, meet students on their “home turf,” and acknowledge their importance by spending time with them, I can honor their voice and seek to understand ways we can meet their needs simply by talking with them. 

Student Presentations at Board of Education Meetings

Twice a month, our Board of Education meets to conduct the business of our district. Providing a venue and an authentic platform for students to directly engage with our Board of Education is important so that our seven member Board can hear from our student body. From the late fall to the end of the school year, students are invited to present updates to the Board about their school, celebrations and ideas and opportunities to better the overall student experience. By inviting students to speak for themselves and engage directly with the Board, this important exchange of ideas provides perspective and information. 

School districts exist to serve the needs of students. By taking the time to listen, we can learn a lot about student needs. This is one of the most important things I can do as a leader– and something that I commit to continuing to do. Enjoy your March and thanks for your support of TSD!

Dr. Marc Schaffer
Superintendent
Thompson School District

Greetings Thompson School District Students, Staff, Parents and Community Members,

From early childhood through graduation, Thompson School District is committed to providing the highest-quality educational experiences for our students with the goal of preparing our graduates to be college, career and community ready. Last month, our Board of Education authorized us to move forward in designing a new Early Childhood Education (ECE) center as well as a new Career and Technical Education (CTE) center. Both of these exciting initiatives pave the way for us to expand upon our already successful programming in these critical areas. For my letter this month, I would like to share a bit more with you regarding our plans for these two new programs. 

We are very excited about the opening of a new early childhood center for a variety of reasons. With the additional space, we can provide a more personalized learning experience for each child by reimagining spaces to support each child’s growth in a way that is developmentally appropriate. This can be through new spaces such as an innovation lab, an outdoor classroom and learning spaces for students to work in small groups and individually. We will have the flexibility to offer an array of services, such as special education, accelerated learning and other opportunities for our students by housing different service providers in one space that can co-teach and collaborate. An important component of our program is parent involvement and education. This space would provide opportunities for a variety of workshops, such as nutrition and financial planning, and provide a venue for our families to connect with other families and resources in the community. We also plan to team with community partners to offer additional services on-site, such as child care, mental health support and parenting classes that can support our students and families. We anticipate opening a portion of our Early Childhood Education center in the 2019-2020 school year.

A CTE center will improve our district’s ability to support and prepare TSD students to be career and college ready. When we listen to local businesses, they emphasize the importance of “soft skills” such as collaboration, communication, problem solving and creativity. The nurturing of these skills can be embedded in each course at a CTE center or be part of a required capstone course for all students in preparing to enter the world of work. A CTE center increases relevance for student learning by offering combined academic/CTE content and credit, where students apply and connect their academic learning directly to their CTE courses. From a programming perspective, the CTE center will provide equality of access to programs for all TSD students, regardless of which high school they attend. Because students from all five high schools can attend, a CTE center also creates the ability to offer deeper and unique career pathway experiences in our district. This allows for programs to be offered at the district level that may not have enough enrollment if they were only offered at one high school, as well as the opportunity to earn industry certifications and college credit. Our plan is to begin operations at our new center during the 2020-2021 school year.

As I hope you can see, Thompson School District is moving forward with exciting and necessary expansions to support our students from early childhood through graduation. These are exciting times for TSD as we forge ahead in creating an exceptional and world-class school district for our 16,000 students.

Thank you for your support,
Dr. Marc Schaffer
Superintendent
Thompson School District

Greetings Thompson School District Students, Parents, Staff and Community Members:

Welcome, officially, to 2019. For my January Blog, I would like to focus on our future work and direction with technology in Thompson School District.

For many years, budget challenges have hindered the progress of technology replacement, upgrades and new initiatives in our school district. Thus, there is a high potential for improved operations in business and instructional technology. Last school year, Innovative Technology Services (ITS) began planning to accelerate the modernization of TSD technology. With improved funding, ITS plans to bring TSD technology up to current standards, especially in comparison to other area school districts.

Modernization initiatives have begun in three technology categories: foundational equipment, applications and efficiencies. The foundation of TSD’s technology is network infrastructure and user hardware. This includes the reliability and functionality of network systems, telecommunications, intercom/bell/public address/clock systems and technical support systems. The network infrastructure is the most important aspect of TSD’s technology, as all other systems and applications run upon it. Also foundational is user equipment, including staff and student devices, classroom projection and copier/printer services.

The use of curricular and instructional applications is where the biggest benefit occurs for teaching and learning. Software runs our business operations, enhances our teachers’ ability to deliver lessons and gives students access to engaging curriculum in all content areas, digital citizenship, innovative design, computation thinking and communications. Applications also enable our students to improve their collaboration skills and become knowledge creators.

Finally, efficiencies are needed to get the most out of our technology investments. These include how we train and guide teachers and students to maximize the use of both administrative and instructional technology.

Once we have modernized all three aspects of TSD’s technology, we will reap the benefits of improved operations and education for our students.

Thompson School District is poised to upgrade our technology infrastructure, systems, hardware and software in order to meet the requirements of current standards. Beginning immediately, we will look for system-wide improvements and upgrades to support our students, our staff and our District community.

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Meanwhile, please don’t forget that Friday, January 11, is the deadline to apply for open enrollment for the upcoming 2019-2020 school year. A copy of the application can be found by visiting www.thompsonschools.org/openenrollment.

Also, I hope you will join us on Thursday, January 24, at 5:00 pm for our next Facebook Live event. The focus of discussion will be the social emotional needs of our students, including what the challenges are and what the district has in place to assist students of all ages. During the Facebook Live event, you will have an opportunity to ask questions in real time by using the comments feature. If you aren’t able to join us, a copy of the entire conversation will be posted soon afterwards on the district’s Facebook account. TSD’s Facebook’s page can be located by visiting the Facebook site and searching for “@ThompsonSchoolDist.”

I wish all of you a phenomenal 2019.

Dr. Marc Schaffer
Superintendent of Schools
Thompson School District

Greetings Thompson School District Students, Parents, Staff and Community Members:

December marks the halfway point of the school year in Thompson School District, and there is much to celebrate and highlight. I would like to focus on a number of key areas that we are actively engaged in to support the work of our great District and the students who attend our schools. 

Last month, the community generously supported the passage of a bond and a mill initiative that will provide critical resources to support our building infrastructure and growth, safety and security, technology, curriculum needs and a commitment to attracting and retaining best-in-class employees. As we head into 2019, you will see your tax dollars immediately at work to support these priorities. We will also be utilizing our citizen oversight and audit committees in order to provide transparency around our bond and mill dollars. Thank you again for your tremendous support and trust in the Thompson School District.

We continue to work on our Strategic Plan initiative by actively engaging all stakeholders within our school and District communities.  As I have shared, at the core and heart of any organization is its mission, vision and Strategic Plan. These necessary components provide a direction and a compass as well as a “True North” for what we aspire to be and what we hope to achieve. This year, Thompson School District has embarked on this journey to bring into focus our future direction and vision with the ultimate goal of developing and then deploying our new Strategic Plan. By June 2019, we plan to deliver a Strategic Plan for the Board of Education to consider. We then hope to deploy this new Strategic Plan for the start of the 2020-2021 school year. It is not too late to get involved and lend your voice to this development process.

Our next community forum will be held this coming Monday, December 10, at 6 p.m. at the district administrative building, located at 800 S. Taft Avenue in Loveland.

At this follow-up meeting, we will discuss and determine the tools and opportunities that are needed to ensure that our students are graduating with the preferred traits and skills that have been identified by our community.

Starting with the graduating class of 2021 (our current 10th graders), students are required to meet enhanced graduation requirements as set forth by the Colorado Department of Education. Chief among these enhanced requirements is a student demonstrated competency in literacy and mathematics. While we have the substantial requirements currently in place for TSD, we are working to finalize and systematize these requirements across all five of our high schools to build in consistency and uniformity for all students – no matter which school one attends. We will provide information to our parents and students this spring regarding our final plan in a clear, well-defined process.

Student achievement is a central and core commitment within Thompson School District. As we head into the second half of the school year, we will be finalizing and seeking Board of Education approval around a unified, systematized and coordinated middle school mathematics program. We will also be looking at our literacy program at the elementary level to ensure that we have consistency and fidelity across the District. In addition, we are proud to announce that we are in the exploration phase of considering a new Early Childhood Center as well as an expanded and enhanced Career and Technical Education (CTE) program. Both of these initiatives will capitalize on the work we are already doing around early childhood and CTE. We recognize that successful student achievement is rooted in early childhood experiences as well as multiple pathways for students to explore later in their academic careers. 

As we head into winter vacation and this holiday season, I again extend a warm thank you and sense of appreciation for your support of Thompson School District. Enjoy the winter break and have a happy new year – I look forward to an equally successful and prosperous 2019.

Dr. Marc Schaffer
Superintendent of Schools
Thompson School District

Greetings Thompson School District Students, Parents, Staff and Community Members:
 
While every day is a great day here in TSD, this month has been especially great so far. Thanks to the trust and confidence of our community, we have passed our Bond and Mill initiatives with a considerable margin of support.  We are grateful and thankful for this support and commit that we will utilize these resources to achieve our desired goals and outcomes as a school district.  
 
As you are all well-aware, it takes considerable resources to support the work that we are doing within the District. For many years, our District has worked tirelessly to ensure that we operate in a fiscally responsible way, while looking to economize, build in efficiencies, and delay and prolong repairs and improvements in order to work within our means. The net effect of this way of operating has led to maintenance backlog issues, the aging of our technology and infrastructure to near obsolescence, and a struggle to keep up with surrounding school districts in terms of providing competitive compensation and benefit packages that honor the work of our very talented workforce. With the successful passage of our initiatives, we will now be much better able to directly address our maintenance needs, our growth needs, our safety and security needs, our curriculum and instructional needs, and our compensation needs in a substantive manner.  
 
Our commitment to the community is to ensure that we are transparent, fiscally responsible, and true to the requirements of the Bond and Mill. To that end, we will be seeking citizens to serve on the CBOC (Citizens Bond Oversight Committee) and the Mill Levy Oversight Committee. Both of these committees have been developed, as promised, to provide direct community involvement and engagement with our resources, as well as provide transparency and oversight with our upcoming expenditures as they relate specifically to the Bond and Mill. An application for these committees will be available soon.  
 
Thank you for your support and confidence in this amazing District. I know that a great many of you played a role in this successful passage through campaigning, advocacy within the community and your vote. Please know that as a District, our 2400 employees are committed to ensuring that the Thompson School District is a World-Class organization with the tenacious and uncompromising pursuit of student achievement and success. I am so very proud of our students, our employees, and our community, and I thank you once again for your investment in our future. We will not disappoint!!
 
Dr. Marc Schaffer
Superintendent of Schools
Thompson School District

Greetings Thompson School District Students, Parents, Staff and Community Members:

At the core and heart of any organization is its mission, vision and Strategic Plan. These necessary components provide a direction and a compass as well as a “True North” for what we aspire to be and what we hope to achieve. This year, Thompson School District will embark on a journey to bring into focus our future direction and vision with the ultimate goal of developing and then deploying our new Strategic Plan. 

Our first step in the process is to convene a stakeholders group to begin to conceptualize and discuss what the portrait of a Thompson School District graduate should be. As students matriculate through our system from early childhood thru 12th grade, we have the unique opportunity to help shape and develop our graduates to be college, career, community and future-ready. But…what does this really mean? What are the skills, attributes, dispositions and abilities our students need to be able to successfully confront the challenges and opportunities that an undefined future brings? These are the important questions we will be inviting our stakeholders to grapple with as we begin to define and construct our collective vision for a TSD graduate. 

The first meeting will be held on Monday, October 29th from 6:00-8:00 pm in the District administrative office located at 800 S. Taft Ave. in Loveland.

All members of the community are invited to attend to provide perspective, voice and insight around these important questions. It is my hope that you will accept this invitation and join us in our important work. We need your perspective and voice in order to lay the foundation for the development of our new Strategic Plan.

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In August, the Thompson School District Board of Education adopted resolutions that contained language that will appear on the ballot for the November 6 General Election for a mill levy override (MLO) as well as a bond question. The MLO initiative will be question 5A and the bond initiative will be question 5B on the November ballot. 

Early this month, you can expect to receive a voter information booklet from the County Clerk which will have the full legal text of the ballot questions, as well as arguments for and against these measures that were submitted by taxpayers within the TSD boundaries. 

In mid-October, you can expect your official ballot to arrive. Ballots can be completed and mailed in or submitted at specified ballot drop-off locations on or before November 6.

In closing, as the fall season sets upon us, I hope that you all enjoy the cooler weather and the great outdoor activities that these months bring. I also invite you to follow me on my new Twitter Account: @tsdDrMarc. 

Dr. Marc Schaffer
Superintendent
Thompson School District

Greetings Thompson School District Students, Parents, Staff and Community Members:

Last month I had the opportunity to participate in five community forums where I received feedback, questions and comments from throughout Thompson School District. In total, nearly 150 students, staff, parents and community members were in attendance. The comments and feedback shared were not only poignant and illuminating, but they also go a long way in providing us with a pulse and sense of what is on the minds of our very important stakeholders throughout this District. Any good leader knows that it is important to listen carefully and seek to understand in order to be responsive and goal-centered. The information and insight gained from these forums will provide my senior staff and me with an excellent launch-point to begin to dig into the important work we have before us during the 2018-19 school year.

While there were an array of topics and issues raised at the community forums, the following four key themes and questions were shared with the greatest frequency:

• How can we better reach out to, communicate and engage with our senior community and other citizens who do not have children in our schools?
• How do we provide more information and education regarding school funding and how tax dollars are utilized to support school district expenditures?
• How can we better promote and publicize our students, schools and achievements?
• How do we address and manage class sizes and school population sizes?

In addition, please know that a collective primary focus will always be on students and student achievement—from early literacy and math instruction through graduating 100% of our student body. Included with this focus will be a strong and unwavering commitment to safety—both physical and emotional—for our schools and those who work and learn within them. 

Our attention now shifts to addressing this feedback and providing responses to these important questions. Over the coming weeks and months, we will be posting links within our website, providing direct media outreach (both digital and print) as well as continuing to go out directly into the community. Our plan is to answer these questions and continue to promote and publicize the work of Thompson School District.

Please know that I am committed to being responsive and in tune with the needs of our stakeholders and our community. We all have a collective responsibility to provide the very best educational experiences for our students, exceptional working environments and support for our staff and a World Class school district that evokes pride for our community. 

Thank you again for your partnership and commitment to Thompson School District. 

Dr. Marc Schaffer
Superintendent
Thompson School District