Jeffco Schools
May 2015 Vol. 8 No. 1
A Jeffco Schools Publication
www.jeffcopublicschools.org
Our Mission To provide a quality education that prepares all children for a successful future.
Jeffco Public Schools is home to over 86,000 of Colorado's finest students. Step inside one of our 155 schools and you will see a staff dedicated to building a bright future for every student. Our staff is supported by a committed school board, involved parents and a caring community that combine to provide a quality education that prepares all children for a promising future.
Bright Stars at Blue Star Recyclers Colorado-based company Blue Star Recyclers has taken on a dual mission: recycling e-waste in a responsible manner and creating jobs for young adults with special needs to help them gain independence. Blue Star began working with Jeffco Schools a year and a half ago, training and employing Jeffco Schools special needs students in the disassembly of electronic components that need to be recycled. Two of those employees-intraining are Jeffco grads Jesse Penton (Columbine ’12) and Daniel Staggers (Arvada West ’14). Jesse and Daniel are paying their dues on the line while hoping to join the team as full-time employees. Blue Star brought Jesse and Daniel in to help with a project made possible by another Coloradobased company, electronic case maker
OtterBox. Jesse and Daniel are helping prepare material for recycling from OtterBox cases that were overruns or defects. “The OtterBox program gives us an opportunity to bring guys in… at a base level as they progress on that line,” said Blue Star CEO Bill Morris. “It gives us potentially an opportunity to hire from within as opposed to just putting out a blanket call to the general public.” This type of project is the perfect fit for special needs students like Jesse and Daniel. “What we discovered about seven years ago was that people with autism and some other intellectual disabilities have an innate talent for the systematic and repetitive disassembly of electronic
components and the sort of repetitive work that goes into recycling which is separation, staging, sorting, cleaning different things. They’re very good at it, but more importantly, they really enjoy the work,” said Morris. Jesse and Daniel are enjoying the work, and Blue Star employees enjoy having them as part of the team. “I get a lot of gratitude for having the opportunity to work with these guys.... I really take a vested interest in helping them gain some independence in their life, as well as teaching them whatever job skills that they could potentially gain from us,” said Blue Star Production Manager Robbie Rappolo. Jeffco is hoping to develop a program similar to one operated by Cherry Creek Schools, where the
district’s e-waste is recycled by the district’s special needs students and grads who are trained on campus before coming to work at Blue Star once they are ready. The program has been successful for Blue Star. Since they began this program, they’ve had no turnover, no absenteeism, and no lost time due to accidents. Once Jeffco develops the program similar to Cherry Creek’s program, a lot more students like Jesse and Daniel will have the opportunity to join Blue Star’s team and learn job skills that will help them gain further independence in their lives. Morris will certainly be excited to take on more students and grads as he said, “they’re the best part.” Watch the JPS-TV story: http://bit. ly/1wWrVVo
Jeffco Rocketeers Are Ready for Zero G NASA has been constantly monitoring the health of its astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). A common problem they found was that carbon dioxide bubbles formed around the astronauts as they slept, which left them feeling disoriented and gave them headaches. To solve the problem, NASA reached out to high school students for help through the High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware (HUNCH). Students at Warren Tech took up the challenge. Warren Tech STEM Instructor Nate Olsen has helped lead a team of talented students this year in developing a C02 scrubber for the space station. “This is a real world problem, and we’re doing real world situations in [solving] it, prototyping it and testing it for human use,” said Olsen. There are two different designs Continued on page 6