Sustaining the Pomona Pipeline

The principals of Pomona-articulation area schools are committed to continuing the great traditions and community of our articulation area. We have a vision for building on Pomona’s rich history with our students, staff, families and neighbors.

On June 22, 2023, the Jeffco Board of Education voted to close Moore Middle School at the end of the 2023-24 school year. This means that students in grades 6-8 will be served at Pomona Junior-Senior High School beginning in the 2024-25 school year when the school transitions to a 6-12 program.

Pomona’s principal, Mr. Patrick Rock, will continue to build on the Pomona area principals’ vision – the POWER OF POMONA – where students are leaders of their own lives, leaders in our school and community and positioned to be future leaders in the workforce.

A 6-12, junior-senior high school is a model that can be found in school districts across the nation. Mr. Rock and his steering team have engaged with, and learned from, school leaders across the country who have demonstrated success with this model. They are committed to customizing the program at Pomona to meet the needs of the students and families in the community and capitalize on the tremendous talent of our staff.

To learn more about the Pomona Junior-Senior High School work – where we have been, where we are, and where we are going – we encourage you to visit this webpage regularly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the principals and schools that are part of the Pomona-area pipeline?

How will middle and high school students be separated in the space and in terms of experience while still building a school-wide community? What protections will be in place to assure the safety and security of a structured 6-8 experience?

Creating a safe culture of belonging is a top priority. Sixth- and seventh-grade students will have their own wing separate from the rest of the building. This means they will have their own bathroom and pod of classrooms to ensure they are not sharing spaces with older students.

During classes, each hallway is monitored by teachers to ensure student safety and to provide a consistent, supportive adult figure for students in their classroom areas. Students will go outside their wing for exploratories designed to help them identify what they want their high school experience to look like. Teachers accompany their classes of sixth- and seventh-graders to their exploratory classes.

Finally, we will lean into some of the positive opportunities in this model by creating structured mentoring relationships between sixth- and seventh-graders and older students. This will help to ensure that our younger students are seen and valued by older students and that older students have the opportunity to act as positive role models for their younger peers. We believe this is one important component of preventing bullying and supporting student mental health through positive relationships.

Will high school students still get an authentic high school experience?

Yes, and even more so with additional resources and opportunities that will come from growing our enrollment with grades 6-12. High school student focus groups over the next year will give students input into the high school experience and how it will differ from what it is now as well as what the middle schooler experience should include.

Similarly, we will create new middle school activities for students in grades 6-8 (age-appropriate social activities, potential for middle school sports, music/arts programming, after-school clubs, etc.). We will also create appropriate, whole-school activities and events to create a strong sense of community across all grades and among our families.

How are we going to build a strong community across our articulation area?

We want your help with this! Understanding how our families want to be engaged and connected in a community is important for us to build a base of support. At a recent community town hall, caregivers, staff and community members came up with a lot of ideas for how we can best build community together. We are excited about putting these ideas into action with you! Here’s a summarized list of the ideas we’ve heard so far:

Hosting community-wide events for more opportunities for families to meet one another. Some ideas include movies in the parking lot, a community barbecue, chili cookoffs, ice cream socials, volunteer opportunities or a day of service, neighborhood carnivals and more.
Use digital media to advertise events by making information easy to access on our website and using social media channels to make our community aware of upcoming opportunities to engage
Promoting sports events and encouraging community participation through elementary student nights or free admission for Pomona-area families
Continuing to lean on PTAs and PTOs to help foster strong communication and trust, including the potential of area-wide meetings and coordination.

For students, we have some ideas about creating intentional, cross-school activities and relationships. In prior years, Pomona High School students have visited Moore, Little, Parr, Warder and Weber in structured environments to help raise up the next generation of Panthers. We want to bring these traditions back and expand them through Reading Buddies, structured mentorship, shared events and activities and more.

How do we make sure advanced opportunities equally serve all students and accommodate different pathways (such as not necessarily college-bound?)

We know that different kids need different things, and we want to build a school that can provide every student with the knowledge, skills and abilities they need to succeed. Our pathways will be designed to work for all the choices a student can make after they graduate high school: going straight into the workforce, joining the military or going to college – as well as a mixture of all three. This means that students can access a well-rounded education that is common at our comprehensive high schools or design a new approach that meets their unique goals. The ultimate goal of pathways are to ensure students are ready for opportunities when they leave Pomona.

Have 6-12 schools been done before? Do they work well?

Yes, 6-12 schools are a common model that many districts across the country and state have implemented successfully. In Jeffco, D’Evelyn – one of our most popular option schools – is a 6-12 school. We also have Alameda and Jefferson junior-senior high schools, which have grades 7-12 in one building. There are many 6-12 public, private and charter schools in Colorado and across the nation.

Will this address the impacts of declining enrollment in the Pomona area?

Enrollment decline is a persistent issue affecting the entire district. Each year, there are fewer children being born and fewer students in our articulation area. By reorganizing seven grades into one building, we can maximize our resources in the context of our declining enrollment.

In addition, data analysis of our articulation area suggests that attractive programming could help us capture more of the students who live in the area. A preliminary analysis shows that only 49% of students who live in the Pomona articulation area attend one of our schools. This means that more than half of students choice out to other articulation areas, districts or charter schools.

This data tells us that while adjusting our boundary could potentially result in more students within the boundary, it is not likely that the boundary adjustment would solve the enrollment problem because of the high amount of choicing out that we experience.

By maximizing our resources to serve the students we currently have we can create stronger programming. This stronger programming might help us capture students who live here but choice out. This is a sustainable plan: even if every student living in the Pomona articulation area attended a school here, we would still have more than 1,200 extra seats available across all our schools.

Will combining the schools result in increased funding? How will we pay for all these pathways?

How would clubs, sports and activities work?

There will be age-appropriate clubs and activities for middle and high school students. Clubs could be available to both age groups if the content and activities are age-appropriate and well-matched to students’ interests and needs. Jeffco does not currently offer middle school sports, but we will explore options for middle school students to join intramural teams and scrimmages at Pomona.

Are students going to be in combined classes (sixth- and seventh-graders and seventh- or eighth- and ninth-graders) for their core content areas?

How will this affect SPED or center program students?

Students in Moore’s SSN program will move to Pomona along with their peers. Moore and Pomona’s students in the SSN program will be educated in separate classrooms divided by grade ranges. This model is similar to how we support students in grades 7-12 at Alameda and Jefferson. This will provide students with the unique ability to stay in the same school for grades 6-12, minimizing transitions between schools.