COLORADO’S BEST SCHOOL SYSTEM-LAKE CITY
The top school district in the state of Colorado for this year is Hinsdale County RE1. The State Board of Education members as of last Tuesday signed off on ratings for more than 1,600 schools in our state and the top school in Colorado was right here in Lake City. Lake City’s school earned 95.4% of points possible in the rating system. The second place winner was the Aspen School District with 89.4% rating.
There are 178 school districts in the state and only 18 received the top rating, “Accredited with Distinction”, by earning 80% or above points possible. Lake City was also included in the top schools last year. Our excellent school system is led by Dr. Karen Thormalen and she is supported by a staff of incrediblely talented and dedicated school teachers. With only 96 students in the system the student to teacher ratio is terrific.
A small district such as Lake City has a real challenge with an athletic program. Amazingly though they field soccer, basketball, and track teams that hold their own with towns much larger in size. Unlike larger school districts each Lake City team member gets a chance to, ”Get in the Game”.
Our new school is state of the art but is already bursting at the seams with the addition of middle school and high school students to the program. Recently middle and high school students were bused to Gunnison but when given a choice to attend school here in Lake City they all decided to stay at home.
This excellent school system was not built overnight. When we moved here our youngest son Dan attended school in the old school where the roof was so fragile the engineers told our school board, of which my wife was a member, to get the children out if we had more than four inches of snow. Our two older children rode the school bus to Gunnison each day, a 52 mile ride one way.
The struggle to build the new school was a tough one. Some members of the county had children in other districts and had no desire to pay higher taxes. Some members of the older community had no children in the school system and were also opposed to a tax increase. The business community knew that in order to progress Lake City must have an improved school system. The first tax increase was defeated and the community was divided and feelings ran very high on each side of the issue. A few years later another vote was proposed and by then Lake City was on its way to being the progressive community that it is today. The tax increase was approved with the support of the entire community and Lake City had the new school that stands at the top of Colorado schools today.
Along with our top school Lake City has a new library that will rival any community two to three times our size. We also have a brand new medical center that is more than state of the art. I really think our top school has inspired our little community to be all it can be.