The fully online Southwest Colorado eSchool, which serves eight school districts within five counties in the region, was awarded the John Irwin award for 2024. The award recognizes “exceptional academic achievement over time” in schools, according to the Colorado Department of Education.
Winning this award means that the Southwest Colorado eSchool has “received an Exceeds Expectations rating on the Academic Achievement indicator of the School Performance Frameworks reflecting exceptional performance in Math, English Language Arts, and Science,” according to the CDE.
Past institutional recipients of the award have included schools in districts on and off the Front Range, such as Denver Public Schools, Boulder Valley RE-2, Jefferson County, Salida R-32 and Telluride R-1, among others.
The Southwest Colorado eSchool is a “small but rigorous” middle and high school, said Principal Meagan Johnson, that has been operating under the San Juan Board of Cooperative Educational Services for the past 15 years. The eSchool serves about 65 students between sixth and 12th grade across Southwest Colorado.
The School serves the Dolores, Dolores County, Montezuma-Cortez, Mancos, Ignacio, Bayfield and Archuleta School Districts, as well as around 30 students throughout Durango, Johnson said.
“I was ecstatic,” she said of the moment she heard that the Southwest Colorado eSchool had received the John Irwin award. “It’s a huge honor for us, as an online school and a small school. We are beyond excited.”
The eSchool has four full-time teachers, including Johnson, who heads up two career-preparedness courses in addition to acting as principal. The school contracts teachers out for additional course offerings, she said.
Classes at the eSchool are asynchronous, allowing students on alternative paths – such as those working part- or full-time while in high school – to continue their education on their own schedule, Johnson said.
Working young people are not the only alternative students the eSchool serves, however – any middle or high school students who want a different schooling experience to the traditional brick-and-mortar model are welcome, she said.
Many students choose to take concurrent-enrollment Fort Lewis College classes while attending the Southwest Colorado eSchool, or take several classes in person at local middle or high schools, and receive the rest of their schooling online from the eSchool, Johnson said – and these collaborations and explorations, she said, are very welcome.
“We have a lot of students who come to us from middle school, but then they want to try the high school (in person),” she said. “And so we always encourage kids, if they want to go back, (to) try it, and if they do well at our school, and want to come back to us, they are always welcome.”
The school operating online and outside the traditional eight-hour school day does not mean that student education is sacrificed, Johnson said.
“Being really small and being really involved in the students academics I think helps drastically,” she said. “We keep pretty high tabs on each of our kids, each of their grades, how they’re performing in the classroom, things that could be done a little bit differently with them ... We push pretty hard, and get involved a lot with the families on figuring out how to best make them the most successful student.”
Johnson feels that the eSchool teachers – many of them local to the area – keeping such intentional and individualized track of the educations of the school’s 60-plus students, is part of what got the school the John Irwin honor.
“Having that local teacher, one on one, keeping track of those 60 kids and meeting with them pretty regularly, has helped us, and our achievement, and getting the scores that earned us that award,” she said.
Eleventh-grader and Durango local Shylene Drumm has been attending the Southwest Colorado eSchool since sixth grade. She began at the online school in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and decided to remain enrolled when she discovered the flexibility the school offered, which has allowed her to further focus on her passion for rodeo while balancing her education.
Drumm feels the consistent communication and extensive support from teachers, and the resulting high academic performance of students, is a big part of what won the school the John Irwin award.
Despite not having a physical classroom, math teacher Shaun Burke has been readily available to Drumm for questions, clarifications and help since she began struggling with math several years ago, she said.
“Shaun has proceeded to meet with me for the last three years, out of school hours, in school hours ... Shaun is an assistant firefighter, and he’ll immediately try to get on a call with me at the station if I reach out (for help),” she said.
Johnson sees the John Irwin award as an opportunity to only continue improving on the operations and conduct that won the eSchool the 2024 honor, as well as create and strengthen additional operations such as in-person field trips and occasional face-to-face schoolwide meet-ups.
“It’s (about) never getting complacent with our education, because our school is an alternative placement,” she said. “(We are) always thinking about, ‘how do we become better? How do we build our curriculum to be robust, (and) really good, and rigorous? How do we keep challenging our kiddos, keep making ourselves better, and keep serving our community?’”
epond@durangoherald.com
