{"id":73866,"date":"2019-08-08T22:40:59","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T22:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/kiva-montessori-school-raises-its-flag\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T16:03:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T16:03:22","slug":"kiva-montessori-school-raises-its-flag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/kiva-montessori-school-raises-its-flag\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiva Montessori School raises its flag"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Cortez Fire Department assisted Children\u2019s Kiva Montessori School staff and students with raising an American flag at their North Mildred Road site on Aug. 2.<\/span>Erika Alvero\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Assisted by the Cortez Fire Department, the Children\u2019s Kiva Montessori School officially hung up its flag at noon Aug. 2.<\/p>\n

School officials said it was a monumental moment for the charter, which has dealt with problems in the past year including falling enrollment, financial shortfalls and asbestos abatement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may seem like a small detail to have a functional flagpole at a public school, but details matter,\u201d Jeff Pope, Kiva\u2019s interim head of school, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

This will be the sixth year of operation for the charter school. Low enrollment has led to financial difficulties, since state funding is largely determined by per-pupil enrollment.<\/p>\n

On top of enrollment issues, asbestos<\/a> was discovered last fall at the school\u2019s 601 N. Mildred Road location, leading to renovations and relocation of classes.<\/p>\n

The school had been on notice from Montezuma-Cortez School District Re-1, which had concerns over the Montessori school\u2019s financial stability, academic performance and state of the facilities.<\/p>\n

The district set some conditions for Kiva to meet, in order for the school to retain its charter \u2013 it was supposed to show open enrollment requests for at least 98 students, in addition to demonstrating financial stability and a certificate of occupancy for the Mildred Road location.<\/p>\n

The school failed to meet the February deadline, but the Re-1 school board decided to extend the deadline<\/a> through the end of the school year, and the charter did meet this one<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, enrollment stands at 97 students. It must maintain an enrollment of 95 students through October, which is when the enrollment count is officially solidified for funding purposes, Pope said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut for the efforts of a few dedicated individuals \u2013 board members, parents and community members \u2013 this school should have closed,\u201d says Pope. \u201cIt\u2019s an extraordinary story of resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n

ealvero@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charter returns to Mildred Road location<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5738,5794,5737,5736,5810,5735,5741],"tags":[21,155,28,216,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-73866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cortez","category-education","category-headlines","category-local-news","category-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1","category-news","category-newsletter","tag-cortez","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73866","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=73866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92628,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73866\/revisions\/92628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73866"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=73866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}