Location, format changed for June 4 Poudre School District consolidation feedback session
Editor's note: All slots for the June 4 listening session have been reserved, Poudre School District spokesperson Emily Shockley confirmed Tuesday.
Poudre School District has changed the location and format of its only remaining session for the community to provide feedback on proposed options for closing and consolidating schools and modifying boundaries prior to the 2025-26 school year.
That session, June 4, will now be held in one-hour group discussions, each with a single member of the Board of Education, in classrooms at Rocky Mountain High School, 1300 W. Swallow Road, and in three hourlong online sessions.
The district announced the location and format change in an email to families of students and school staff Monday afternoon.
The goal, according to the email, is to “hear more voices and have a more collaborative process” by structuring the sessions into the conversational style small-group format that the Facilities Planning Steering Committee used in its eight listening sessions.
Participants are being asked to sign up in advance online. All sessions are scheduled for June 4.
In-person sessions will be held in classrooms at Rocky Mountain High School, with a maximum of 20 participants with each available board member, at 9 a.m., 10 a.m., 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. Online sessions, also scheduled for one hour apiece, are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m., 5 p.m. and 6 p.m.
Those who sign up will be able to spend the hour talking with the school board member and others in their room. Any questions an attendee has that are not answered during the conversation can be written on a notecard, along with a contact email address, that will be collected by the board member at the end of each session.
More: Breaking: New scenarios call for the closure of 5 PSD schools
The steering committee is scheduled to provide a final set of options to the Board of Education at its May 28 meeting. The school board is scheduled to vote on a closure and consolidation plan June 11. Any changes would not take effect until the 2025-26 school year, Superintendent Brian Kingsley and other district officials have said.
A previous listening session with the full Board of Education held April 16 at Poudre High School followed a different format, with speakers limited to 90 seconds apiece. That session lasted about 4 hours and 15 minutes. The school board had planned to use that format again for the June 4 session, originally scheduled over a 4 1/2-hour time period, at Fort Collins High School.
Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, x.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: PSD changes location, format for June 4 session on school closures
