Cañon City High School Guides Students to Success With Carnegie Foundation Grant

Cañon City High School is often considered the heartbeat of the community, with students from across Cañon City converging to learn a little something new and start on the path to their future careers.

On June 18, it was announced that CCHS is one of 24 school systems in the United States selected by the Carnegie Foundation to be a part of its Future of High School Network and will receive a $100,000 grant in accordance.

“This grant — and our inclusion in Carnegie’s Future of High School Network — recognizes and supports Cañon City High School as an innovative leader in public education. With this grant, we will continue our pursuit of engaging, real-world learning experiences that prepare every student for college, career, and life. This grant represents a powerful opportunity to reimagine what’s possible for CCHS and the future of Cañon City Schools … Learning For Life!” wrote Superintendent Adam Hartman in an email to the Daily Record.

For the past decade, CCHS has set itself apart with its dedication to helping students earn college credits in high school, find appropriate scholarships, and has also built an internship program that has become the envy of the state — each of which played a large part in the school’s selection by the Foundation.

“It was an invite-only kind of grant,” said CCHS CTE Coordinator Madison Tortessi. “And we think we received the invitation because of a conference that Bill Summers] and I presented at in New Orleans last year…where we presented on our capstone process, our traits and skills, portrait of a graduate and how we assess that using our capstones.”

As part of the prestigious Future of High School Network, CCHS was also awarded a hefty $100,000 grant to use in a variety of ways within the school to support numerous programs and instill a deeper love of learning in its students.

According to Summers, the first half of the grant has already been gifted to CCHS, with the next half arriving this time next year.

At this time, school administration has yet to decide exactly how to spend the grant, but Summers, Tortessi, and CCHS Tiger Open Pathways Coordinator Michelle Lake will shortly attend a kick-off conference to the program in California on Wednesday, where Tortessi anticipates they will engage with other education experts to brainstorm ideas and pathways for the future.

“We’ll have a better idea of how we’re going to spend the money after that launch,” Tortessi said. “Currently, we offer a $400 stipend for our students during their internships. Eight years ago, when we started [the internship program, we were paying our students $75. Our goal is to make our internship stipend equitable so students can make enough money as if they were being paid for their hourly work.”

“The plan, right now, is to create a road map over the next two and a half years that actually spells out what high school should look like for our students’ future,” Summers added. “How do we become relevant and engaging and provide for them the best support, the best education that we can provide for their future in their world?”

In addition to the much-needed grant funds, the Future of High School Network will also serve CCHS as a conduit to interface with other like-minded, future-focused schools, to learn about new and innovative ways to teach kids. Tortessi likened it to education once being based on “seat time,” i.e., the amount of time children spent in seats equated to how much they learned.

“Carnegie is going to track all these 20 schools and all their innovative ideas to release a report to show the state and federal government and the Department of Education that there are better ways to learn,” Tortessi said.

The process was a fast and furious one as the school was invited to apply in November, and the application was due just four weeks later. School administration decided to use this opportunity to showcase exactly what its students had been learning and turned to CCHS video production teacher Jamie Reed and her students to put together a comprehensive and informative application video.

“We had the option to answer in written form or submit a video and we chose to submit a video because we felt a video could really showcase the great things happening at CCHS,” Tortessi said. “We asked the students to be involved because students helping with the video creation would showcase their skills.”

“We’ve embraced project-based learning through our capstone program, which the video was a great example of,” Summers added.

After advancing further into the selection process, Tortessi, CCHS Principal Bill Summers, Superintendent Adam Hartman, School Board member Molly Merry, and 3 Rock Engineer (and CCHS alumnus) Dimitri Zamarripa, were formally interviewed by representatives of the Carnegie Foundation. During the interview, the Foundation learned exactly how CCHS innovated learning at a bedrock level and built on it to design and implement life-changing capstone projects and internship opportunities.

From here, the sky is the limit for CCHS.

To put CCHS’s accomplishments in perspective, the stats for the graduating class of 2025 include:

* Earned nearly $1.8 million in college scholarships.

* 91% received college credits through the concurrent enrollment program.

* Earned a record-breaking 11,049 credits worth $1.9 million in tuition savings.

* 41 students earned associate’s degrees.

* 92 students achieved 50 or more credits.

* 41 CCHS students represented 10% of the total Pueblo Community College graduating class this year.

* Students earned 677 industry-standard certifications in business, welding, videography, auto technology, culinary arts, engineering, river sciences and construction trades.

* Accomplished 270 community internships at 60 hours each with more than 102 local business partners, earning $77,500 in cash scholarships.

“I am hoping that there will be a healthy networking and interchange of ideas that Bill and Madison will bring home,” Merry, a longtime Cañon City Schools teacher and principal, said. “Having been in this district for as many years as I have, we’ve always been future-focused…It’s in the DNA of our district.”

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