Westminster board spotlights student and staff achievements; superintendent lists scholarships and program milestones

At its special meeting, the Westminster Public Schools Board of Education recognized students and staff for academic and service achievements and heard the superintendent’s end‑of‑year report highlighting scholarships, retirements and program milestones.

The board honored Aiden Martin as the district’s first Westminster Public Schools student recorded in the meeting to earn an associate degree before receiving a high school diploma. Presenters praised his academic performance, leadership and engagement; Aiden said he will study business administration at Colorado State University with a human resources designation.

The Randy Royal Foundation presented its 2026 Positive Citizenship Award and a $1,500 scholarship to the winner identified in the record as Karen Adonz (transcript spelling varies). Presenters said the foundation received 12 applications this year and described the award’s emphasis on character and community service.

The board presented Fred Awards recognizing district staff who “turn the ordinary into extraordinary.” Recipients named in the record included Pablo (logistics/administrative assistant), Jamie Rivera (counselor at Sunset Ridge) and Julian Proctor (assistant principal at Tennyson), with nominators and students giving brief remarks about the recipients’ impact.

Superintendent Dr. Gado (name spelling varies in the transcript) reported that the Westminster Public Schools Foundation held a 2026 scholarship awards ceremony and announced scholarship support for district students; the speaker corrected a dollar figure while speaking, leaving the exact total ambiguous in the meeting record. The superintendent also announced the retirement of 19 staff who together represent more than 400 years of service and described a hands‑on partnership (transcribed as “M on the Range”) that allowed students with special education needs to build electronic scooters as part of an applied STEM initiative.

Among academic milestones, the superintendent said the Gregory Hill early learning center achieved level‑four certification in the Marzano high‑reliability framework and stated, as presented, that it is the only early learning center in the country to have earned that designation (this assertion was made by the superintendent during the report). The superintendent also outlined a three‑week summer art series with workshops available at $5 per day and reported graduation numbers of 388 seniors at Westminster High School and 78 graduates at Hidden Lake Secondary School.

Board members offered congratulatory remarks to graduates and award winners and closed the meeting with routine notices and an adjournment at 5:49 p.m.

Note on transcript spelling and figures: the meeting transcript contains inconsistent spellings for several names and an uncertain scholarship total (the speaker corrected a numeric figure in mid‑sentence). Where the record was unclear, this article attributes claims and figures to the board speaker or to comments read into the record rather than asserting unverified corrections.