STEM School Highlands Ranch is committed to teaching our students to demonstrate the following five Spartan Characteristics:
- Honesty
- Integrity
- Respect
- Responsibility
Our Elementary Students learn about our Spartan Characteristics in their social-emotional lessons and sing about them in the STEM cheer. These characteristics will also be part of discussions occurring during Secondary Access classes throughout the year. We have posters throughout the school and refer to these values regularly at all grade levels.
We aim to teach, model, and live respectfully daily at STEM and within our community. We ask that all STEM families embrace the Spartan characteristics at home as well.
Each year, our neighboring businesses reach out at the start of the school year to inform us that families and students are either using their parking lots for drop-off, pick-up or parking. They share with us how it is impacting their business and the frustration that it is causing their employees and their customers.
We know that using these parking lots is convenient for some of our families and that the feeling of accessing our campus in the morning or afternoon is a challenge. While we don’t want any of our families to start or end their days this way, we ask for your cooperation in following the procedures that are outlined in our Transportation Management Plan.
It may be hard to believe that you are impacting their business operations by just quickly pulling into another business’ parking lot, but we can assure you that it is frustrating to them and then trickles into the school by spreading our resources thin in order to enforce our TMP.
School funding in Douglas County is already stretched super tight, and STEM does not have additional funding to allot toward hiring extra staff or additional security guards to manage parking lots or manage drivers to ensure that they are following our TMP. We are currently asking staff to do extra duty to manage these areas for a period of time, but this is over and above their everyday job responsibilities.
The entire STEM Administration Team is asking all families to please help us be respectful to our neighbors’ wishes and to please follow the TMP. To demonstrate respect to our neighbors, we ask that you abide by this request and use the following guidelines:
- Drop-off, pick-up or parking in ANY surrounding business is NOT allowed. This includes the Center for Strength parking lot, VISA, any of the businesses along Ridgeline Blvd. or Barrons Blvd., the Hotel, Panorama, or any of the other businesses in the area.
- LEFT-HAND TURNS into either the Elementary or Secondary Parking Lots during Driveline Hours (7:15 a.m. to 8 a.m.) is STRICTLY prohibited. Staff members are the only ones permitted to make a left into parking lots.
- Parking in a restricted parking spot, or blocking a driveway or a garage in the neighborhood on the West side of campus is not allowed.
Please speak to your children about the importance of using the crosswalks. We want to ensure students get to and from school safely each day.
Thank you so much for your partnership and for allowing us to be a part of your student’s development.
We believe that despite any challenges we face when we work together, our students will grow into unique humans who will continue to impact the world we all share positively.
In partnership,
LynAnn Kovalesky, Executive Director
STEM Cheer:
We are the STEM Spartans. We’ve got all the traits.
The things that help us innovate, that’s what makes us great.
Honesty, Integrity, Respect, Responsibility, and E M P A T H Y.
Gooooo Spartans!