• Category 3

    Selected in 2022

  • Grades: k - 6
    School Setting: rural
    Town Population: 602
    Student Enrollment: 180
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 0%
    White/Caucasian: 83%
    Hispanic: 15%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0%
    Asian: 0%
    Native American: 0%
    Other: 0%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:13
    % Reduced Lunch: 55%
    % ELL Learners: 0%
    Founded: 1907
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Carol Vezzani
  • CONTACT:
    610 Columbia Ave
    Swink, CO 81077
    719-384-8103
    carol.vezzani@swink.k12.co.us
Swink Elementary School
Swink, CO
"Swink has created positive change in our social-emotional support system for students and staff."
1. Tell us about your school’s success.
I have worked in education for 25 years and in a number of different districts and schools, I can honestly say Swink is among the best. We are a small rural school but are still able to offer a wide variety of academic classes, and extracurricular activities and offer resources to our staff and students in the area of mental health.

We struggled during covid just like every other school, but we found a way to keep students in class as much as possible which shows in our state test scores. We have dedicated teachers who went above and beyond. Many taught in person while zooming with students who had to isolate. We provided families with hotspots so their child was able to log into class and we made daily calls to students who were struggling to find out what we could do to help.

I believe our hard work paid off. 54.3% of our elementary students met or exceeded expectations in ELA and 53.3% in math on the 2022 CMAS test.
2. Talk about the greatest contributing factor(s) that promoted positive change in your school.
Swink does an amazing job of supporting our students academically, but I feel the greatest contributing factor that has created positive change is our social-emotional support system and staff.

Carla Mills is our mental health counselor at Swink School, hired through the CO SHP grant. This is separate from our school counselor.

In K-6, we teach the Second Step curriculum, including the Bullying Prevention Unit. We also teach a condensed version of the Signs of Suicide curriculum to grade 6.

Mrs. Mills has small groups available, including grief groups.

We have partnerships with community resources for outside services:
We also have outside counselors who are able to come in and see students on a regular basis.

We try to give students the resources they need to help with mental health issues so students can focus on academics.

I continue to be amazed by the staff here at Swink, especially Carla Mills. She is a blessing and we would not be the school we are without her.
3. How has ESEA funding supported the school's success?
Swink has used ESEA funding to hire staff so our class sizes and the teacher-to-student ratio remains low. We have two classes at every grade level or two teachers per grade level. We fill this has been a great use of funds as our elementary students get a lot of one on one attention and we are able to identify learning difficulties early in the year. Our teachers are able to provide individualized plans for students when deemed necessary. Small class sizes have benefited both students and teachers as students get the attention they need to be academically successful and our teachers do not deal with a lot of discipline issues and are able to focus on each student's needs.
4. What professional development activities were used to improve teaching and learning?
Swink has one professional development day per month. We use our professional development days to help teachers become more effective educators and to make our school a safe learning environment. We also focus on mental health and taking care of ourselves as adults. Over the past year we have had the following professional developments:
-CDE came in and spoke about restorative practices and discipline
-Teachers used a day to work on their read act requirement of adding the reading endorsement to their license. a number of our teachers used the WIDA website through CDE to complete their courses.
-We brought in local law enforcement to talk about signs of drug use and how to administer Narcan. They also spoke about school safety issues
-We had our social-emotional counselor give a presentation on staff resilience and they gave suggestions to help staff take care of themselves. They also had a webinar on trauma-informed care and talked about what it means to be a trusted adult.
5. Talk about the cultural shift leading up to your school's success.
I believe the culture shift that leads to our school's success, is hiring a social-emotional counselor who is amazing and hiring staff who truly cares and buys into what we are trying to do.

Today's students have so much more to deal with than when my generation was in school. It is difficult to expect a student to focus on academics and care about grades when they have so much going on outside of school. We made a decision to help students by giving them tools to deal with mental health issues and by also giving teacher's the resources necessary for them to help students.

We want staff and students to want to be here. We believe when you feel someone truly cares you will want to be in that atmosphere. It is evident that both our students and staff want to be here and I believe that stems from the support we offer.

The bottom line is, if a student has a lot to deal with and no help dealing with it, academics will suffer. We make sure everyone has someone to turn to for help.
6. How has community involvement strengthened your success?
We are a K-12 school and our secondary students do a great deal with our elementary. We have an internship program for our high school students, which gives them credit for being an intern with a teacher or administrator. Many of our elementary teachers take advantage of the high school intern and use them to read with the students, help students with work, help test students, or whatever else they need extra support with. This program really helps our elementary and secondary students feel like they belong to one school.
Our BOE members are also great support. They attend most extracurricular events and truly listen to their administration when it comes to ensuring we have what we need to run a successful and safe school.
Finally, we have a Lion Pride Membership where local businesses or individuals can buy a package (there are different levels) and the proceeds benefit different programs within the school. The support we have had from this program has been fantastic.
Stats
  • Category 3

    Selected in 2022

  • Grades: k - 6
    School Setting: rural
    Town Population: 602
    Student Enrollment: 180
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 0%
    White/Caucasian: 83%
    Hispanic: 15%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0%
    Asian: 0%
    Native American: 0%
    Other: 0%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:13
    % Reduced Lunch: 55%
    % ELL Learners: 0%
    Founded: 1907
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Carol Vezzani
  • CONTACT:
    610 Columbia Ave
    Swink, CO 81077
    719-384-8103
    carol.vezzani@swink.k12.co.us