There just weren’t enough students in each of four Boulder Valley elementary schools to create a class, so the solution was to have four schools collaborate for an accelerated math class.
Only four or five gifted students needed accelerated math each year in each school, and it was not possible to create a separate class for them. So this year, four schools created one class for all accelerated students at Emerald Elementary.
“We’re thinking outside the box,” said Emerald Principal Samara Williams. “It’s just a really cool collaboration.”
The two challenges for the collaboration were scheduling and funding.
The gifted education office for Boulder Valley will pay for the bus that returns students to their own schools after the math class. Other costs, including extra teacher workload, will be covered by Impact on Education and other departments.
All schools agreed to have math the first thing in the morning so that the fourth graders would not miss anything while traveling to Emerald.
The new class has 20 students, 19 fourth graders and one third grader. It is co taught by Carrie Troxel and Melissa Tingley.
“The whole school had to support this,” Troxel said.
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