Fifth-grade teacher Ed Bailey takes students to Santa Fe, N.M., for a week each year, winding up class lessons on diverse cultures. Parent help makes such events possible. It's not so hard, for example, to take 40 fourth-graders on a sleepover in Denver's history museum, as happened in January, when 20 parents volunteer to come along. Other factors contribute to Steele's success. The student population is stable, with little turnover throughout the year.
Teachers join the staff and stay for years.
Discipline, because of all that parental involvement, is seldom an issue. Neeves, like her teachers, is striving to make a good school even better. It would create an avenue for concerns to be aired, and resolved. Neeves is particularly interested in involving older students. Then there's the focus groups she would like to see, quizzing small groups of parents about how to improve Steele.