{"id":23561,"date":"2025-02-13T18:36:53","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T01:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/swos-board-discusses-student-support-services-and-exceptional-student-services\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:38:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:38:38","slug":"swos-board-discusses-student-support-services-and-exceptional-student-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/swos-board-discusses-student-support-services-and-exceptional-student-services\/","title":{"rendered":"SWOS board discusses student support services and exceptional student services"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Southwest
Southwest Open School closed and canceled classes on Thursday.<\/span>The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Southwest Open School board on Monday discussed a variety of topics, most notably their monthly focus for February, updates on the district\u2019s mill levy and the school\u2019s awarded grants.<\/p>\n

This month, the SWOS focus area is student support services and exceptional student services update. These students, which account for 23% of the student population at SWOS.<\/p>\n

Attendance rates, without factoring in ESS students, is 80.1%, and ESS student attendance is 77.7%. Course completion rates follow a similar trend, with 84.6% of the general population completing courses compared with 77.3% of ESS.<\/p>\n

The board also briefly discussed vape issues. Director Joe Kelly noted that students are given a warning on their first offense, and are given an assessment after their second offense to check for \u201cimpulse control\u201d issues. If an addiction exists, they work to help students target it.<\/p>\n

Kelly added that vaping incidents have been dropping with this method.<\/p>\n

The board spoke of the district\u2019s mill levy and were informed that the district will disbursing $3,500 in six equal payments from March through August and $7,000 for the 2025-26 school year for teachers.<\/p>\n

Since SWOS doesn\u2019t have paraprofessionals, they will only have to keep track the portion of the mill levy that refers to teachers.<\/p>\n

Another update about the 2025-26 school year was given. As of August, the district will \u201cno longer provide bus transportation for charter schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

SWOS is in the process of starting its first student newspaper, \u201cThe Bottom Line,\u201d through its student government. The school is looking for interested \u201cstudent journalists\u201d to join, noting that the paper will start out as digital only. If funding is procured, they would discuss transitioning to printing physical copies for campus.<\/p>\n

The first issue is expected to be completed by the end of February.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of the meeting, the board was given a grant update. The school was awarded a reengagement grant, totaling $292,000. This grant will be paid out over three years for a case manager position. They also received a School Health Professional Grant for $75,000 per year, among numerous other grants to fund programs like the esports and bike riding clubs, a campus greenhouse and the school\u2019s food and snack program.<\/p>\n

In action items, the campus improvement proposal for one of the campus\u2019s building was approved, and the mill levy vote was tabled for March.<\/p>\n

Before tabling the mill levy vote, the board spoke of the mill levy\u2019s \u201cteacher and paraprofessional only\u201d stipulation, voicing their concerns for other staff, specifically staff who serve as teachers when needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

updated about district mill levy and grants<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,155,28,60,29,2084,2467],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-southwest-open-school","tag-swos"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78178,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23561\/revisions\/78178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23561"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}