One minute, the 4-year-old boy was giggling. The school’s new behavioral specialist made a game of helping him put on his shoes, playfully sniffing them then scrunching up her face in pretend horror.

A minute later, he was inconsolable, an emotional U-turn perhaps sparked by the transition to clean-up time. A teacher cradled the boy in her lap, calmly dodging his small flailing arms. He quieted when he got his pacifier and the shield of a cozy blanket over his head.

Such scenes — of young children struggling to cope — have become more commonplace in Colorado and nationwide as a generation of babies and toddlers whose early life was marked by the pandemic now enter preschool and kindergarten. Experts say many of these children carry more emotional baggage than their predecessors, owing to the stress that coursed through families as isolation, unemployment, sickness, and grief took their toll.

“Any child who was impacted by the pandemic during their first three years of life is bound to have something lingering,” said Karen Wolf, mental health manager at Clayton Early Learning in Denver, where the boy cried under the blanket.

More of Colorado’s pandemic babies and toddlers are showing up with developmental delays than their counterparts born just a few years before. In 2019, about 9,000 children from birth to 3 years old were eligible for free state services because of development delays. By 2023, that number jumped 17% to about 10,600.

There’s also a group of young children who don’t have official delays, but missed out on basic social skills when preschool and playdates stopped during the pandemic. Preschool enrollment in Colorado’s public schools dropped by more than 20% during the 2020-21 school year compared with the year before, according to the Colorado Department of Education.

Early educators say they’re seeing more children who struggle with speech, communication, and managing their emotions than in years past. More students also now struggle with classroom expectations. Jennifer Lussier, a kindergarten teacher at Coyote Ridge Elementary in Broomfield, said a couple years into the pandemic she experienced an unfortunate first: A kindergartner told her, “I’m not doing that. That’s stupid.”

Some teachers and advocates say it’s hard to untangle the effects of COVID from other factors, such as children’s frequent use of smartphones and tablets — a phenomenon exacerbated by the pandemic.

Many schools and child care centers are working to meet students’ extra needs. They’ve added more teacher training or hired new staff to work with children who hit, bite, or have tantrums. They devote more class time to social-emotional skills and call in mental health specialists when big problems erupt.

But some worry that chronic industry problems, including a shortage of therapists who work with young children, high turnover among early childhood educators, and a lack of funding for the field at large, are stunting recovery efforts.

The demands on preschool teachers and daycare workers have grown even as their resources have shrunk, said Lori Ganz, clinical director of The Resource Exchange, which provides early childhood services in El Paso County and nearby counties.

“Their classrooms are larger and the children are more challenging,” Ganz said, “and some days they just can’t do it.”

New parents in pandemic faced an uncertain world

Chmura Smith was in her last semester of community college when the pandemic hit. She was also pregnant with her first child.

“The pandemic kind of shut down my whole life,” she said.

Classes moved online, a format Smith didn’t like. She remembers a chronic feeling of uncertainty. She worried about “getting COVID and it never going away and always being in lockdown.”

A few days after her May graduation, she went into labor much too early. Her son Jadon was just two pounds and two ounces when he was born. He came home healthy after two months in the hospital, but as he grew, he struggled to pronounce words and would sometimes stutter. He’ll say things like “Gween Gwoblin” when talking about his favorite Spider-Man villain.

Jadon, now 4, has a special education plan and gets speech therapy at Clayton Early Learning, where he attends preschool. His 3-year-old brother, born full-term as the world was opening back up in 2021, never had any speech problems.

For Smith, it’s hard to pinpoint the reason for Jadon’s speech delay. She said her own stress during the pandemic could have sparked his premature birth, which in turn could have contributed to his speech problems.

“That year was a lot,” she said.

Erin and JK Perry, who live in the western Colorado town of Eagle, also wonder about the effects of the pandemic on their 4-year-old son. In so many ways, he’s thriving. He’s an outgoing child with a big vocabulary and good friends.

But he also struggles with anxiety at times — for example, if his parents switch off who’s bringing him to preschool without telling him.

“He will yell. He will refuse to eat his breakfast. He will refuse to put his shoes on,” Erin Perry said.

“I feel like some of that could have been me and JK and just the levels of anxiety we were dealing with,” she said. “It wasn’t just being new parents. It was being new parents in a pandemic. It was like being scared to go to the grocery store.”

Erin Perry said teachers at their son’s child care center talked of behavior post-COVID that they’d never seen before. When their son was 2, one teacher was responsible for shadowing a toddler in the class who continuously acted out. When that teacher turned her back momentarily, the toddler bit their son hard enough to draw blood, she said.

Fewer young children flagged for extra help

During the first year of the pandemic, thousands of babies and toddlers with delays or disabilities missed out on services that would have helped them catch up. They weren’t going to the routine doctor appointments or to child care where professionals might have noticed an issue and referred them for a free state evaluation.

In addition, Colorado temporarily raised the bar in 2020 for the level of delay children needed to receive early intervention services because of a budget shortfall. A version of the earlier threshold was reinstated in 2023.

To make matters worse, early intervention services switched to virtual as the pandemic raged. Some families opted out all together, while others tried them but struggled to realize the benefits. A lag in getting kids set up with therapies and other services can compound their problems, experts say.

Lussier, the kindergarten teacher in Broomfield, said before the pandemic she typically had one or two children with delays in her classroom, but now it’s often double that.

She recalled a boy in her class last year who spoke only in short phrases like, “Bathroom, bathroom. I use bathroom.” Once, she told the boy, “Put your name on your paper.” He looked at her in bewilderment. He didn’t understand that she was asking him to write his name.

A nationwide study conducted by Johns Hopkins University researchers and published this year found modest decreases in screening scores for three developmental areas for children from birth to age 5 during the first two years of the pandemic compared with children the same age before the pandemic. They include communication, problem-solving and personal-social, which includes skills like feeding and dressing.

Researchers said the findings were generally reassuring in the short term and “suggest reason for cautious optimism.” But they warned that more kids with delays could tax the already overburdened system. They noted that the additional deficits translate to about 1,500 more children nationwide being referred for developmental delay evaluations each month.

Classrooms problems aren’t always due to developmental delays

Early educators and mental health specialists say there’s also a growing group of young children who don’t have developmental delays or disabilities, but struggle with classroom norms.

Early in the pandemic, when fewer kids attended child care and preschool — and many adults were constantly sanitizing — some children missed out on the sights, sounds, and textures of a normal classroom: The jumble of classmates finger-painting, playing in sandboxes, and shaping Play-Doh.

When children eventually did experience those things for the first time, it was often overwhelming.

“A typical scenario is a kid who’s pushing and shoving the kids in the line, and it’s because they can’t handle the sensation of touch with other people close to them because they’ve not experienced that before,” said Ganz, of The Resource Center.

Anna Clark, a kindergarten teacher in Cottonwood Elementary in the western Colorado city of Montrose, used to take out a box of fidget toys occasionally when a child needed a calming activity. Now, the box is always out because so many children need sensory breaks.

Taryn Long, who evaluates children ages 3 to 5 to see if they qualify for special education services in the Brighton-based District 27J, said since the pandemic, more children are being referred for evaluations because of “behavior.” Perhaps they pushed a classmate at child care, hit a teacher, or had a meltdown.

“They’re getting kicked out left and right. All sorts of write-ups,” said Long.

But often such children don’t qualify for special education because they are doing fairly well in some ways, she said. They can follow directions, answer questions, and know colors or parts of the body, for example.

Long, and other professionals who work with young children, say some of the struggles young kids have experienced are because in the thick of the pandemic they didn’t have regular interactions with other children and were on screens more than ever.

Parents told Long, “We couldn’t go to the park. The park was taped off. All they had was us.”

Clark, echoing concerns raised by other educators, believes constant stimuli from screens has made it harder for children to enjoy simple things, partake in imaginative play, and even hone their fine motor skills.

With all the one-finger swiping, she said, “They’re not pinching their fingers to turn pages in a book or a magazine as often, and so it kind of just all escalates into these deficits we’ve been seeing.”

Educators say children’s development ‘not a lost cause’

Some early educators say young children today need more practice and more time to pick up key social and emotional skills they would typically learn before kindergarten. Even with early setbacks, children are adaptable and resilient.

“It’s a magical time,” said Wolf, of Clayton Early Learning. “We can have so much good impact still. It’s not a lost cause.”

Earlier this summer, Clayton hired its new behavior specialist — a roving teacher with a background in special education — to help the growing number of preschoolers with challenging behavior. She’s the one who made a silly game of putting on the boy’s shoes.

Last year, Lussier, the kindergarten teacher in Broomfield, spent eight weeks early in the year on lessons and stories about feelings and friendships, not the usual six. She also started going over the rules of afternoon play time, like not grabbing things out of people’s hands, every day.

In the Eagle County school district, all 98 preschool teachers and assistant teachers will receive training this year on how to manage children with the most extreme behaviors — a change from the “as-needed” approach of years past.

Feedback from annual staff surveys prompted the added training, said Shelley Smith, the district’s director of early childhood programs: “It always is a need, but it grew significantly, from ‘I need more resources’ to ‘I don’t feel safe. I can’t keep the other children safe.’”

Several local early childhood leaders said they need more funding for early childhood mental health consultants, specialists who work with parents and teachers to prevent and manage challenging behavior in children.

Ganz, of the Resource Exchange, said the demand for such services far outstrips supply. Her program provides early intervention and early childhood mental health consultation to about 1,200 children at any given time in El Paso County and three nearby counties.

Her mental health consultant budget was recently cut by $300,000 after federal COVID relief funds dried up. Her program turns away five or six callers a week who want mental health consultations, she said

“Now is exactly when those children need the help,” she said. If they land on a waiting list, “we miss a window of opportunity, because for a child, six months is a very long time.”

Asked how much money she’d need to fully staff her early intervention and mental health consultant programs, she said, “We can use a magic wand of a million dollars.”

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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The 2% bonuses, awarded to more than 700 educators on Aug. 22, came as DPS and the union have been locked in a contract dispute for the past four months after district leaders said they wouldn’t fully fund an 8.34% raise for teachers for the 2024-25 academic year.

DCTA President Rob Gould in an interview accused district leaders of trying to “sow discontent” with the bonuses, noting that bargaining for a new contract is expected to start next semester. The bonuses were not negotiated between DPS and the union, which was also not informed about the payments before they arrived with members’ paychecks, he said.

“This is a typical union-busting technique that management uses,” Gould said. “They are trying to undermine us.”

DPS spokesman Scott Pribble confirmed that the district did not inform employees about the bonuses, which he said were a common practice with the district’s other union groups.

“There was no malicious intent and DPS is disappointed with the claim that this was done to cause strife within the DCTA membership,” he said in the statement.

The bonuses were awarded to 715 educators at the highest “step” on the district’s pay scale. Teachers receive “steps and lanes” compensation, which is based on their experience and education levels, respectively. Those employees are at the top “step” and are not eligible for a pay raise based on their experience, so DPS gave them a one-time bonus worth 2.1% of their annual salary, according to both the district and union.

DPS did not provide the total cost of the employee bonuses. They came as the union and DPS have yet to resolve a contract dispute that began in May, when more than 100 educators and union members protested in front of district headquarters downtown.

The two sides are in disagreement over how big of a raise employees were supposed to receive this year. The union has argued employees were slated to get an 8.34% raise, but the district has said it will only give teachers a 5.2% pay increase.

DPS leaders have said they didn’t receive enough money from the state’s elimination of what is known as the budget stabilization factor — which withheld funds from schools for years — to trigger the full raise detailed in the union’s 2022 contract. The 8.34% raise would have included a 5.2% cost-of-living increase.

District officials said in May that teachers would get an overall 5.2% raise, which includes a rise in “steps and lane” pay but a smaller 2.06% cost-of-living raise. The district also said teachers would receive a $1,000 bonus as required in the union’s contract.

“There’s a point of contention and a little bit of confusion,” Superintendent Alex Marrero said during a school board meeting last month about what would have been required for teachers to get the full raise.

The district needed to receive $16.9 million from the reduction of the budget stabilization factor to trigger the maximum raise, but only received $11.4 million, he said.

“We knew coming into this year that it would be virtually impossible considering what is left in the pot,” Marrero said, adding, “This was considered in negotiation.”

Gould said he and Marrero typically meet in August as the new school year gets underway but that didn’t happen this year — a sign of the discord between district and union leaders. (The union said Thursday that Gould is in talks with the superintendent about meeting soon.)

The union filed a grievance over the pay dispute, which was denied, so now the case is going through arbitration, Gould said.

Teachers are upset they didn’t get the full 8.34% raise, Gould said, and he thinks that’s why the district gave out additional bonuses last month.

“There’s a lot of people that are frustrated with them right now and they’re trying to make it so they’re not frustrated,” he said. “But they’re doing it outside of the bargaining process.”

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Under Jeffco Public Schools’ policy, trip supervisors assign students to overnight accommodations with other students based on gender identity rather than the sex assigned at birth. It’s part of the district’s effort to reduce the “stigmatization” of transgender students and ensure equal opportunities for all students while also protecting privacy.

The lawsuit filed this week by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal advocacy group, argues that parents must be notified in advance and allowed to make sure their children are assigned to rooms with students of the same sex.

Joe and Serena Wailes allowed their 11-year-old daughter to go on a school trip to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., in June 2023 after they were told their daughter would be rooming with three other fifth-grade girls. On the first night, their daughter learned she had been assigned to share a bed with a transgender girl.

The Wailes parents sent letters to administrators asking them to let parents opt out of any policy that assigns children to rooms based on gender identity rather than birth sex.

But the lawsuit says Jeffco officials repeatedly denied their request.

“Jeffco doubled down on their policy and made it clear that they will continue to ignore concerns from parents and hide information from parents about who their children will share rooms with on overnight school-sponsored trips,” ADF attorney Mallory Sleight said Thursday in an emailed response to questions.

“We are asking Jeffco to let parents be the ones to make decisions on their children’s privacy while protecting the privacy of all children.”

Jeffco Schools officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Faced with legal demand letters last year, officials said they would not “knowingly” assign students of different birth sexes to the same bed. The policy continues to allow shared rooms: “Students who are transgender should be assigned to share overnight accommodations with other students that share the student’s gender identity consistently asserted at school.”

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court on behalf of parents of three children contends parents have a fundamental right to make decisions about the upbringing and education of their children, a right that includes protection against “violations of bodily privacy which result when they must expose their bodies to the opposite sex in intimate settings, like overnight accommodations or shower facilities.”

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At the same time, parents whose children attend Dupont Elementary School are organizing to fight the construction of five additional storage tanks at the Magellan Pipeline Company’s terminal at 8160 Krameria St., which is across the street from the school in the Dupont neighborhood.

The additional tanks would increase the amount of volatile organic compounds, benzene and other hazardous chemicals emitted into the air.

And Cultivando, a nonprofit that focuses on community health and clean air in Commerce City and north Denver, is joining Adams 14 officials at 10 a.m. Saturday to rally resistance during an event at Adams City High School.

About 40 people gathered last week at the elementary school to learn about Magellan’s expansion plans, their environmental impact on the neighborhood and how parents and nearby residents might push back against the new storage tanks.

Parents and neighbors are concerned about how increased pollutants would impact people’s health, especially school children who play outside, and about more truck traffic in the neighborhood — another pollution source.

“Let’s do it! Vamos!” one father shouted as Wednesday night’s meeting concluded.

Magellan applied in the fall of 2023 to build the five additional gasoline storage tanks at the site. Twenty already are there, and those tanks store fuel delivered via a pipeline that is then trucked around Colorado to fuel vehicles. The company wants to expand, in part, to store reformulated gasoline, which is a special blend required from June to September along the Front Range to reduce ozone pollution.

But people in the neighborhood, including the school principal and residents who live next to the storage facility, were unaware of the project until The Denver Post reported on it in July.

School officials, environmental activists and neighbors are furious about the lack of communication from the company or from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Air Pollution Control Division, which has the authority to approve, amend or deny the expansion application.

In their application to build the new tanks, Magellan officials wrote that they would notify the neighborhood of the plans by posting signs on the front gate. When Guadalupe Solis, Cultivando’s environmental justice programs director, mentioned the signs at the Wednesday meeting and asked the crowd whether anyone had seen them, multiple people scoffed and laughed.

“That’s what we thought. That’s why we are here,” Solis said. “They are doing this because we are people of color. We are immigrants, and they are sure we are not going to say anything, that we are going to be silent.”

Annelle Morrow, a spokeswoman for ONEOK, Magellan’s parent company, said the Dupont terminal expansion was in the works when the two companies merged in September 2023.

“Whether the proposed project is ultimately approved or denied, ONEOK intends to be a good neighbor to the school and surrounding community for years to come,” she said. “We have already reached out to the school district, and it is our genuine hope that — over time — we can demonstrate ONEOK’s commitment to engaging meaningfully with the communities in which we operate.”

Determining the environmental impacts

As part of its permit application, Magellan was required to submit an environmental justice impact analysis, to determine whether the work would take place in a disproportionately impacted community.

That analysis determined nearly 45% of the residents in the neighborhood surrounding the terminal qualify as low income, 79% are people of color, 31% are burdened by the cost of housing and 12% speak limited English. The environmental impact on the surrounding community is supposed to be taken into consideration by state regulators when they review the permit application.

The parents, school board and neighbors have an uphill battle.

Magellan filed for a construction permit, which doesn’t require the same level of scrutiny as other permits, and the Air Pollution Control Division already has given it preliminary approval.

Michael Ogletree, the division director, said his staff’s work is defined by the law and they must follow it when making decisions on permit applications.

“We must approve permits that comply with the law,” he said.

In the wake of the complaints over the permit’s secrecy, the Air Pollution Control Division extended the public comment period to 60 days, instead of the usual 30.

Ogletree also said the state health department plans to install air monitors near the school to detect emissions. He told The Post that plan was in the works before the newspaper published its July 22 story about the project, but people at the school and neighborhood residents said they had not heard about air monitors until they started complaining about the expansion project.

When asked about that discrepancy, a division spokeswoman, Leah Schleifer, sent an email to The Post saying Ogletree meant monitors were in place “in the area of the school district,” and he directed his staff to explore the possibility of adding monitors near the school.

Ogletree said his agency will listen to community feedback and offer support.

To that end, the health department is planning a community listening session from 6 to 8 p.m. Sept. 17 at Eagle Pointe Recreation Center in Commerce City. Schleifer said attendees must register in advance at bit.ly/APCDPublicSession. If not enough people sign up, the meeting will be moved to online-only, she said. She also noted that the meeting was not about any specific permit application.

“This is not fair”

Joe Salazar, chief legal counsel for Adams 14, said “the cake has been baked,” but he still believes there is a chance organized opposition could halt the permit. The school board voted unanimously last month to allow Salazar to fight the project on behalf of the district. He said it was unusual for a school board to take that step.

The Center for Biological Diversity will join the parents’ group, Cultivando and the school district in resisting the project, Salazar said.

“We’re up against it right now and we’re going to have to fight really hard to get the Air Pollution Control Division to change their minds,” he said.

Parents who attended last week’s meeting were worried about their children playing outside, but Dupont Elementary Principal Amanda Waller said she hoped to allow outdoor playtime as long as she feels it is safe.

“I pray we are not going to have to go that far,” Waller said. “It’s not fair to our kids.”

Waller broke down in tears as she talked about the gasoline storage expansion, saying she had been caught off guard when she learned about it. She also called it “a big deal” for the school.

“I just want you to know that I love and care for this community so much that this is really painful to me and I’m going to do everything I can to encourage all of us to join together because it’s about the kids,” she said. “This is not fair. This doesn’t happen in Cherry Creek.”

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Marrero will present a closure plan to Denver’s school board on Nov. 7 and directors will vote on the proposal two weeks later, on Nov. 21, according to a timeline the superintendent presented at the board’s meeting this week.

While school closures are back on the table in Denver, Marrero didn’t provide any insight into what his proposal could look like, including which schools — or even which type of schools — might be affected. If closures are approved by the school board, they will go into effect after the end of the current school year, according to the timeline.

Schools in northwest and southwest Denver have felt the brunt of low enrollment in the past, but board member Michelle Quattlebaum cautioned that it doesn’t necessarily mean they will be the only ones targeted for closure.

“We don’t know what this analysis is going to uncover,” she said, adding, “We don’t know where these recommendations — what regions the recommendations — are going to happen.”

DPS is holding community engagement sessions starting next month to talk to families and others about the potential closures. The sessions are being held at schools that aren’t going to close because the district didn’t want to give anyone an idea that their school will be shut down before a recommendation is made, Marrero said.

The following sessions on school closures have been scheduled:

• 6 p.m. Sept 24 at South High School, 1700 E. Louisiana Ave.
• 6 p.m. Sept. 25 at Manual High School, 1700 E. 28th Ave.
• 6 p.m. Oct. 3 at Lincoln High School, 2285 S. Federal Blvd.
• 6 p.m. Oct. 7 at CEC Early College, 2650 Eliot St.
• 6 p.m. Oct. 14 virtually via Zoom
• 6 p.m. Oct. 15 at Montbello High School, 5000 Crown Blvd. Denver

Marrero last proposed school closures due to falling enrollment in October 2022, when he recommended shuttering 10 schools. The school board was reluctant to close schools at that time, but eventually voted in March 2023 to close three schools: Denver Discovery, Mathematics and Science Leadership Academy, and Fairview Elementary.

Three new members — John Youngquist, Kimberlee Sia and Marlene De La Rosa — have been elected to the board since the last time school closures were considered. Still, directors acknowledged that the upcoming months won’t be easy.

“This entire process is going to be difficult,” Quattlebaum said.

The school board opened the door for another school closure proposal earlier this summer when members passed a policy that set guidelines for the superintendent to use should he propose another plan. The board tweaked its policy two weeks ago, including pushing back the deadline for a proposal to November.

Marrero is considering school closures because enrollment is declining in DPS schools as fewer Denverites are having babies and gentrification has pushed some families from the city. The district projected earlier this year that 6,338 fewer children will attend Denver’s K-12 schools within the next five years.

The district is not alone in seeing fewer students enroll in its schools; K-12 public schools across the state and the U.S. are experiencing similar declines, including Jeffco Public Schools, which has gone through its own round of closures in recent years.

Schools with low enrollment often have to make difficult decisions, such as whether to cut extracurricular activities in school or mental health support, said Rob Gould, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association.

When schools have fewer students, they get less funding, which means they have fewer resources to provide to children. Declining enrollment also hits the districtwide budget, which for DPS is $1 billion.

“We do have a lot of schools that don’t have the ability to provide all of the support for kids,” Gould said.

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Without such a change, it’s possible graduation rates could drop for the Class of 2025, Colorado Department of Education officials told the State Board of Education on Thursday.

To graduate from high school in Colorado, students must show proficiency in English and math. Using SAT scores is the most common way that districts offer students to meet that requirement, since the test is already administered to students in their junior year; ninth and 10th graders take the PSAT. But officials couldn’t say how many students were relying on the test result to meet the graduation requirements this year.

The proposed change the State Board is considering would lower the minimum passing score on the math portion of the SAT from 500 to 480. Without that change, officials say the percentage of students who can use their SAT score to meet graduation requirements will drop from 45% in 2023 to 39% with these results. That means about 3,400 students might be looking for a last-minute alternative to meet graduation requirements before May.

Read more at Chalkbeat Colorado.

Chalkbeat Colorado is a nonprofit news organization covering education issues. For more, visit chalkbeat.org/co.

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As it did last year, the school, part of Denver Public Schools, recorded the highest overall scores in both the math and English language arts categories.

The education department released statewide CMAS results last week, which showed that test scores are rebounding to pre-pandemic levels.

At the district level, Liberty School District J-4 in eastern Colorado had the highest percentage of students (75.8%) who “met or exceeded expectation” in English language arts, while the Cheyenne Mountain School District in Colorado Springs saw the highest percentage of students (59.9%) meet or exceed expectations in math.

The Boulder Valley School District had the highest percentage of students meet or exceed expectations in metro Denver on both the math (53.5%) and English language arts (63.2%) tests.

Across DPS, 40.7% of students met or exceeded expectations in English language arts, up less than the percentage point from 2023. The state’s largest school district has yet to see literacy scores recover to pre-pandemic levels, as 42.8% of students met or exceeded expectations in 2019.

Only 31.2% of DPS students met or exceeded expectations in math, which is up almost a percentage point from last year but still below 2019 levels. Overall, the district had fewer students take CMAS exams in both math and literacy this year compared to 2019 and 2023.

At DPS’s district-run schools, 34.2% of students met or exceeded expectations in math, which not only surpassed pre-pandemic levels but is the highest percentage the district has ever achieved, said Simone Wright, chief of academics.

“We’ve seen some tremendous bright spots that show us the work we are doing is the right work,” Deputy Superintendent Tony Smith said.

CMAS tests are offered to students in third to eighth grade. Children who score at least 750 on the exams are considered to have “met or exceeded expectations,” which means they are on the path to being college- or career-ready.

Statewide, about 500,000 children took CMAS tests this year, a figure that was similar to 2023 but down from before the pandemic.

Here are the schools that ranked the highest in both the literacy and math categories based on their mean scale score, which is the average performance of the students who took the exam:

Top 5 performing schools in English language arts

1. Polaris Elementary, Denver; Denver Public Schools; 795
2. Dennison Elementary School, Lakewood; Jeffco Public Schools; 792
3. Zach Elementary, Fort Collins; Poudre School District; 789
4. Challenge School, Denver; Cherry Creek School District; 784
5. Hulstrom K-8 School, Northglenn; Adams 12 Five Star Schools; 783

Top 5 performing schools in math

1. Polaris Elementary School, Denver; Denver Public Schools: 790.
2. Bear Creek Elementary School, Boulder; Boulder Valley School District; 786
3. Dennison Elementary School, Lakewood; Jeffco Public Schools; 783
4. Aurora Quest K-8, Aurora; Aurora Public Schools; 781
5. High Peaks Elementary School, Boulder; Boulder Valley School District; 781

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School leaders learned of the allegations through an anonymous tip Thursday and began investigating, Principal Thomas Velazquez wrote in a letter to football families that was shared with the wider school community.

The team’s Friday practice and dinner and Saturday scrimmage were canceled as a result, Velazquez wrote. School officials are fully cooperating with the police investigation.

Neither Velazquez nor Littleton Public Schools Superintendent Todd Lambert, who wrote the letter to the wider school community, provided further information about the nature of the allegations.

“We know you may have questions, but at this stage of the investigation we are not able to share more details,” Lambert wrote. “We will share additional information as appropriate.”

Littleton Police Department spokesperson Sheera Poelman confirmed the allegations were reported to a school resource officer but could not release further details because the case involves juveniles.

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On Aug. 13, a former Lakewood High School student told police she was sexually assaulted by a school employee about 10 years ago, the police department said in a Wednesday statement.

The woman told investigators that in her junior and senior years of high school, Rubel “Tim” Martinez — a campus security officer with Jefferson County R1 School Security — repeatedly assaulted her on and off school grounds, police said.

Martinez worked as a campus security officer at Jefferson Junior and Senior High Schools and at Lakewood High School from 2006 to 2022, according to the police department. He also ran an after-school clown club at Lakewood High School.

Lakewood officers arrested Martinez on Friday and he was booked into Jefferson County Jail, where he is being held on a $20,000 cash-only bond, according to court records.

On Tuesday, the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office charged Martinez with one count of felony sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust, court records show.

Lakewood police officials said anyone with information related to the investigation should call detectives at 303-987-7229.

Martinez is next set to appear in court on Friday for a return filing of charges hearing.

Former School Employee Arrested for Sexual Assault

A former Jefferson County Schools employee has been arrested and charged for allegedly sexually assaulting a high school student between 2014 and 2016.

On 8/13/24, a former Lakewood High School student contacted Lakewood Police… pic.twitter.com/00nZJUdPqU

— Lakewood Police Dept. (@LakewoodPDCO) August 21, 2024

This is a developing story. 

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