Academy for Literacy, Learning & Innovation Excellence

  • The Academy for Literacy, Learning & Innovation Excellence is a tuition-free, public school of choice in Colorado Springs serving students in 2nd- 5th grade, with a dedication to helping struggling readers weighed down by their learning differences to finally take flight.

    Using the Take Flight Intervention delivered by Certified Academic Language Therapists, in combination with core classes taught by teachers who understand and accommodate for characteristics of Dyslexia, students can finally spread their wings and soar to new heights alongside their peers. 

     

    Our Mission

    ALLIES inspires students with language based learning difficulties and characteristics of Dyslexia to celebrate their strengths and overcome their struggles while preparing for a successful educational experience in middle school, high school and beyond. 

     

    Our Vision

    In its quest to be the finest school in District 49 to serve students with language based learning difficulties and characteristics of Dyslexia, ALLIES aims to make a difference in the lives of the students it serves and the families who support these children.  Students succeed in a caring and supportive environment that accommodates for their needs and draws on their strengths. ALLIES families experience the difference and watch their bright children flourish as they overcome their academic struggles and discover their gifts.

     

    Take Flight

    This is a comprehensive intervention program for students with Dyslexia, created by the Luke Waites Center for Dyslexia and Learning Disorders at Scottish Rite Hospital located in Dallas, Texas. 

    This is an Orton-Gillingham based program that addresses many components of reading, including: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency and basic comprehension.

    Students participate in a 3 year intervention: sessions are taught 50 minutes a day / 5 days a week. 

     

    Please contact Rebecca Thompson, Director of Academic Services at  719-494-8620

POWER Zone Overview

  • POWER Zone's educators and support staff are dedicated to facilitating a mission focused on purposeful risk, ownership of learning, whole child-student concept, engaging inquiry and respectful relationships (POWER). Their values involve climbing with confidence where everyone has permission to fail and try new ideas. The zone is creating a loyalty effect, where working together to solve problems helps everyone succeed.

    POWER Zone administrators and teachers strive to treat everyone as the most important person, ensuring a positive culture. And a focus on community service ensures their community's support in critical times. A family-first focus for a well-rounded life helps each student’s family enjoy each other, increasing academic productivity. School faculty are dedicated to nurturing respectful relationships. Teachers are given autonomy to teach and through the proposal process, anyone can bring ideas to the entire zone community for approval and implementation. All suggestions are considered with respect. The zone's administration believes in innovative change in education with comprehensive engagement, so all seek mastery.
    • Science, Technology, Engineering, Math Ecosystem
    • Arts Integrated into STEM
    • Elementary Science Labs
    • Engineering Academy
    • Robotics and Technology

    POWER Zone Indicators


    Hundreds of families responded to the POWER Zone performance dashboard survey sent in late 2015. The zones administrators are using the information their families provided, as a way to create a zone that is the best place to learn, work, and lead within. The word "best" can be subjective. What does it mean to be the best in the eyes of our community? What indicators would evidence that we are "best?" Finding the answer to this question is exactly the point of the POWER Zone performance dashboard process. As a collaborative community, our zone is committed to creating school priorities that are very real and meaningful.

    In POWER Zone, each family's input is helping to drive zone-level educational decisions. Please browse our community created indicators to see how each directly supports your child’s ability to successfully leave POWER Zone career or college ready.
     

POWER Zone STEM System

  • Odyssey Elementary School, Skyview Middle School and Vista Ridge High School are designated by District 49 as a "STEM schools." STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math.

    The STEM designation's purpose is to get students interested in STEM-related careers, but not at the expense of other content areas. The root of a STEM education is inquiry based learning, which is teaching students how to think and problem solve.

    Schools are implementing this type of learning through project-based units, which requires the integration of other content areas. Students begin to see the relationships between various subject areas and use major skills learned in each area in multiple classrooms. Our goal is to help our students become well rounded thinkers and problem solvers in this digital age.
  • Critical Thinking

    Critical Thinking

    Critical thinking refers to a person’s capacity and commitment to embark on an unbiased, self-guided, self-disciplined reflection of ideas and evaluation of concepts, while recognizing a need to understand multiple perspectives. In our zone performance dashboard survey, parents told us that the ability for their child to not only problem solve, but to also think critically while doing so, is very important.

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  • Problem Solving

    Problem Solving

    Problem solving skills require our students to understand how to properly identify a problem, plan out how to solve it, follow that plan, and know what to do if they don’t find the solution right away. Regardless of the profession your child wants to attain after high school, he or she will need to be able to solve problems in a variety of ways. This zone indicator allows POWER Zone to support more learning environments and opportunities that teach students the ability to look at real life problems through different lenses and points of views.

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  • School Climate

    School Climate

    When we mention school climate, we're referring to a school's quality and character, along with the values expressed during social interactions and organizational processes and structures. To ensure POWER Zone schools demonstrate a positive school climate, where there is a focus on developing quality and supportive stakeholders relationships, we will continue our unabated focus to bring a positive school culture into every single classroom.

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  • 49 Pathways

    49 Pathways

    To ensure POWER Zone students have the opportunity to choose, create and explore targeted academic and career pathways, we will continue to commit resources in this area at our secondary schools. We now have an individual career and academic plan coordinator and a dean of concurrent enrollment at Vista Ridge High School. Both of these positions provide evidence of our commitment to this area. More and more, teacher training is occurring in this area each semester, so that we can ensure we have the personnel and resources to support such an exciting and important endeavor.

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  • Literacy

    Literacy

    Literacy is a process of reading, thinking critically and communicating around a variety of diverse and meaningful content. Through our POWER Zone performance dashboard survey, parents overwhelmingly explained their support for strong literacy skills. We couldn’t agree more. A child's future success rate across all core content areas has been closely related to their ability to read proficiently by third grade.

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  • Safety and Security

    Safety & Security

    Our parents must know their children are safe. Our students must feel safe to learn. The importance of ensuring a safe and secure learning environment was universally seen throughout our performance dashboard survey as the most important indicator to our community. To ensure POWER Zone school environments are kept safe and orderly, we will continue to regularly garner input from our community.

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Portfolio of Schools

  • Portfolio of Schools District 49 will create a robust portfolio of distinct and exceptional schools.  It’s not enough just to have a bunch of different kinds of schools; the district needs to have high quality, exceptional schools.  District 49 strives to offer wonderful schools in all of its zones, schools that are different from each other and superior to the options students might have in neighboring districts and communities.
     
    District 49’s board-approved strategic plan provides unified vision, goals and strategies to prepare students to achieve like never before.  Its strategic plan is organized around a a big rocks metaphor.  If the district identifies and focuses on what's most important – its big rocks of trust, community, best district, portfolio of schools and every student – and then adds other things around them, the medium-sized rocks, and finally works in the pebbles, everything better fits together.  District 49 has applied this metaphor in its strategic plan, which identifies the district's Big Rocks.  These strategic initiatives will be emphasized over the upcoming years, representing the district’s commitment to its community.  These five rocks are its foundation for building an excellent future with its staff, students and greater community.