Superintendent Chris Godowsky opened the board meeting by showing a video produced for the Public Education and Business Coalition that features STEM Launch principal Kate Claver and students describing hands-on, project-based learning.

Godowsky said STEM Launch is the district’s strongest-performing Title I school and highlighted classroom projects shown in the video, including an engineering partnership between third and seventh graders that rerouted water to preserve a beaver family’s habitat. "They helped engineer some culverts that would divert the water… and it worked," a student in the video said, describing the problem-based approach.

Godowsky tied classroom work to recent assessment data. He said the district has returned roughly 82–90% of winter MAP assessment data and that, overall, "we're at 60 percentile or higher in every content area and grade level except for seventh-grade language arts where we were at the 50 percentile." He added that math growth in several grades ranged from the low 60s to the high 60s percentile and that year-over-year median growth percentiles improved anywhere from 8% to 17% in some grades.

The superintendent also discussed poverty indicators and funding connections. He said STEM Launch has about 67% of students qualifying for free lunch and roughly another 11% qualifying for reduced-price lunch. He noted districtwide rates of 57% (elementary), 54% (middle), and 51% (high school). "To qualify for free lunch this year for a family of four in Colorado, your gross annual income has to be less than $42,000 a year," he said, and added that reduced-price eligibility is “actually less than $59,500 a year.” Godowsky emphasized the importance of families submitting applications so the district receives state funding targeted to students identified as at risk.

Board members and staff pledged to circulate more detailed data to members in follow-up emails. Godowsky said further MAP results and projections will be shared when the winter administration is complete and said the district hopes those results will be reflected in upcoming CMAS achievement reports.

The board did not take formal action connected to the update; Godowsky said he would make additional data available to the board and answer questions by email or at the next meeting.