by Faith Engel

The students at West Grand Middle School visited the Pumphouse at CO River CR1 (Trough Rd,) and the Wolford Dam on September 12-14, as part of “Watershed Week,” which was sponsored by a grant from the Summit Foundation.

Katherine Morris- a Grand Co. water specialist, presented to the kids at the Gore Canyon Whitewater Play feature about the water rights purchased by Grand County, including the basics of why these water rights are important to their community and how we share water rights with communities on the front range. The older kids sampled micro-invertebrates and measured water quality and stream velocity.

Kayli Foulk and Mary Price from GCWIN took the kids on a guided hike into the canyon to discuss and define watersheds with activities planned to lead discussions about the quality of water and how watersheds can be a source of fresh water, but also funnel pollutants. The kids enjoyed spraying food dye representing several types of contaminants and watching them roll down a plastic tarp shaped like a watershed before hiking back for the second part of their morning.

Ken Belcher, John Marcelle, and Grey Pickett from the Bureau of Land Management, held a lecture on the recent Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic. Topics for discussion included the role of insects and disease on the forest environment, impacts on the hydraulic cycle and water quality, (as well as on the Lodgepole Pine forests themselves,) and the benefits of forest management on maintaining healthy forests. The presentation from the BLM ended with a demonstration measuring an actual tree so that they could understand how a tree is measured without climbing it, but by using math equations instead.

The 6th graders also visited Wolford Dam, where students put themselves in the shoes of the 2 billion citizens worldwide who still fetch and carry their water, taking part in a race to fill buckets manually. A discussion followed about how we take advantage, and perhaps even waste this valuable resource because of the convenience of plumbing. Students were informed about the dam using terms they were now familiar with for measuring volume, and contemplated the need for awareness and conservation of this natural resource in Kremmling.

by Tara Walker

To officially walk around the world, Guinness World Records required that the journey be 14,000 miles while walking across at least 4 continents. Molly Letoskfy had a goal of being the first woman to walk around the world, but her focus was raising funds and awareness for breast cancer. She finally reached the 14,000-mile goal in Grand County in the summer of 2004. Polly says that this challenge showed her that she wasn’t alone, over 20,000 people worldwide helped her during her journey, including Lions club and Rotary club members. When she returned, she had so many stories to share, she wrote a book, “3MPH: The Adventures of One Woman’s Walk Around the World”.

That book ended up in the hands of Florice Lietzke, Grand county resident and a member of the Fraser Lions Club. In her book, Polly shared many personal stories of how Lions Club members around the world helped her. Florice eagerly contacted Polly, hoping to get her to visit Grand County again as a motivational speaker. Polly responded, “I will do anything for Lions. So many Lions helped me so I always promised myself that whatever the Lions want for the rest of my life, I will give it to them. What the Lions want, the Lions get.”

On Thursday, September 14, Polly Letofsky returned to Grand County to a full house of county residents and Lions club members. She started by explaining that she first thought of walking around the world when she was 12 years old, hearing about David Kunst, the first man to walk around the world. Then in her thirties, she was living in Vail, Colorado. So many of her friends were being impacted by breast cancer and there was a lot of misinformation. She decided she had to do something.

She decided to walk. She walked across North America, Australia, Asia and Europe, 22 countries and 14,000 miles. It was in Australia when she met her first Lions club member. “I was the CEO of my own walk, but the people of the world were like a chain helping me along from town to town. I learned that we are never alone. All we have to do is ask. Don’t be afraid to go on your own journey.”

When Polly arrived back in the United States, a lot had changed in 1999. 9/11 had happened, the war in Afghanistan had happened. She was worried she wouldn’t recognize her home. When she flew into New York City and turned onto Time Square, she felt love. “I feel blessed to know that as I headed home across this country, I found Americans to be the friendliest and most hospitable people of anyone in the world. I hopped and skipped across New Jersey, upstate New York, Wisconsin. I saw the first little orange school bus and though it was so cute. I saw the little league games and the Dunkin Donuts and the demolition derbies and the small-town fairs. After 4 years of discovering all the countries, I was really discovering my home. This was my prize. My prize for persevering.”

On her historic walk, Polly went through 29 pairs of shoes. In the last mile in Colorado, her friends gave her a ruby pair of sparkly New Balances and told her, “There is no place like home”. The audience was in stitches as Polly shared interesting stories from her 5-year walk. On her journey, she found $38 dollars of change on the road. She had food poisoning three times (Australia, Luxembourg and Missouri). At one point, people on the road tossed a lasagna at her, but forgot the utensils. In India, she had to use Google to hire a man to walk with her so men would stop harassing her. All her stories were filled with humor even when discussing serious events.

Polly Letofsky raised over $200,000 for breast cancer. While many of us may not be ready to go walk around the world to raise funds for breast cancer, she encouraged the audience to join local organizations like the Lions Club or the Rotary Club and to volunteer in our communities. She encouraged everyone to be brave because if she could become the first woman to walk around the world, we could do whatever it is we fear doing.

The elementary, middle and high school, were all categorized as “approaching” for academic achievement and academic growth. In regards to the approaching category, Jeremy Meyer, Director of Com-munications at the Colorado Department of Education stated, “The performance levels indicate what a typical student at each level should know based on their command of grade-level standards. So the students are ‘approaching’ their command of the grade-level standards.”

One of the highest areas for the school district was the high school’s postsecondary and workforce read-iness with 69.7%. High School principal, Elizabeth Bauer, noted that they were particularly proud of the high schools’ graduation rate which was 96%. In other areas of interest, 8.3% of graduates seek further education at a 2-year higher education institution and 29.2% continues their education at a 4-year college.

K-8 principal Jess Buller commented that the elementary school is seeing higher achievement but lower growth and conversely the middle school is seeing higher growth but lower achievement. This higher growth is reflected in the middle school’s increase by one step in the performance framework for this academic school year.

“Coming from where we were with the middle school two years ago on ‘Priority Improvement Plan’ where we were meeting about 38% of the qualifying criteria for accreditation and now we are right around 50%… We are very pleased with the increase in growth,” said Principal Buller.

Ideally, the schools would indicate both higher growth and achievement; however, Principal Buller feels that the schools are making strides in terms of increased staff retention and a change in culture. The school district also recently adopted a new math series, Envision. In terms of math, the elementary school saw more growth on the CMAS (Colorado Measures of Academic Success) with a 54.5 and was higher than the state’s 50.0; in contrast, the elementary saw relatively low growth in English language arts (28.0). The middle and high school stayed relatively even in both content areas with math scores showing growth at the high school of 48.0 and the middle school at 40.0. For English language arts, the high school was at 46.0 and the middle school was at 44.0. The state’s growth is at 50 which is considered an average year of growth.

In looking at West Grand schools, we have seen that, while they are certainly not failing, too many students are still not proficient within all subject matters. Academic growth is happening at a slower pace than is average in the state and growth gaps among disaggregated students remain par-ticularly large. In the future, a hot-topic could arise as more parents choose to opt-out of state testing. Today, the state requires 95% participation, but does not penalize the school. However, federal mandates often tie school performance and participation to money incentives.

Superintendent Darrin Peppard stated, “This is a really good baseline… going forward we are working on a strategic plan for the District directly related to instruction and aligning our curriculum to state standards K-12 and focusing on our English Language Learners to not only speak the language but un-derstanding from an academic stand point.”

The West Grand School District Board of Education will meet at noon today, Thursday, September 14 to approve a resolution to officially cancel the school board election for this November. Helen Webster, a school board candidate, rescinded her petition yesterday leaving only four candidates. There were only four vacant seats so the candidates will automatically serve on the school board beginning in November as elected members.

The candidates are: incumbent Jessica Smiley, Everett “Shorty” Lemon, Michael “Mitch” Lockhart and Shawn Lechman. Everett “Shorty” Lemon was also appointed on the school board last night to fill Brendan Gale’s vacancy. He will serve in that capacity until November when he will officially take his elected seat.

by Erik Woog

Recently the town board passed a measure regarding OHV (off-highway vehicle) travel within the Town of Kremmling. This ordinance represents a great deal of effort put forth by committee members, the police chief, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), local businessmen, attorneys and citizens to come up with a workable law to accommodate OHV travel within Kremmling.

With involvement from so many directions, each stakeholder had a say in their respective concerns, for example Kremmling Chief of Police Scott Spade advocated for simple and clear enforceability, while the BLM stressed the importance of access to essential service providers for recreationalists.

The result was twofold, the first required alterations to the existing OHV ordinance and the second was the addition of an all-new ordinance pertaining specifically to utility type vehicles (UTV), neighborhood electric vehicles (NEV), and personal transportation vehicles (PTV) which are all essentially side-by-side vehicles. The modifications to the existing ordinance included a number of safety revisions, such as stopping at all stop signs as opposed to being required to stop at all intersections regardless of signage, which created a level of confusion for other motorists. All users are now instructed to obey the posted speed limits instead of the former 15mph limit. Additionally the designated routes have changed to include access to the Town Square on 3rd Street, as well as route changes to access fuel and other essential services (New route maps will be available at the Town Hall). The original ordinance had no clear provision for side-by-side vehicles, and for this reason was confusing for both users and law enforcement, this necessitated drafting a new ordinance specific to this type of vehicle.

So in a nutshell, the revised old ordinance applies to all terrain vehicles (ATV)and motorcycles only; the new ordinance applies to side by side type vehicles (Razors, Rangers, golf carts, etc…) The new measure will allow users open access to streets and roadways for normal transportation purposes, and are subject to model traffic code and all the same laws automobiles are. They are however prohibited from operating on the Highways except to directly cross them, but are otherwise allowed to travel freely. All such vehicles are required to be equipped with an audible warning device (horn etc.) and operators are required to use standard hand signals to indicate turning intentions. Drivers and passengers are also required to wear seat belts and eye protection if no windshield is present.

The remaining specific requirements and restrictions though numerous, are largely common sense, ie headlights, taillight, sound emissions, etc. Interested persons can obtain a copy of these laws at the Kremmling Town Hall. Overall, the effort produced a sensible series of guidelines that will serve both the users and the community well for years to come.