From Bottom Third to #3: How Rocky Mountain Elementary Made Belonging the Strategy
Three years ago, Rocky Mountain Elementary was measuring the right things and trying hard, but missing something essential. The Panorama survey data told the story in numbers: low belonging scores, students who couldn’t name a trusted adult, and uneven engagement. Not too surprisingly, the people inside the building already felt it.
“There was a sense that everyone was trying to do the right thing, but not necessarily together,” says Tyler Jones, who was then an assistant principal. “We were focused on proving academic growth, but not enough on how students were actually feeling in our building.”
The divide between students showed up every day. Some kids came prepared and ready. Others had needs that led to them being sent out of classrooms at a rapid pace. “Teachers cared deeply, but they didn’t have the tools to build a community that brought every student in,” says Jones.
Assistant Principal Vickie Cooper describes the staff culture with a vivid image: Everyone’s arrows were going in all directions. There was no common language, no shared practice, no throughline connecting what one teacher was doing on Tuesday with what another was doing across the hall on Wednesday.
What the school needed wasn’t a new curriculum or another two-day training that would fade by October. It was a system, something that would become, as Cooper puts it, part of the fabric.
They are kids. They should feel excited to come here. We did not want a school that was only about continually drilling and driving toward academic success.
Not Another Shiny Object
The path to Edtomorrow began when Cooper’s former colleague shared the company’s First Five email. She and Jones decided to ask a small group of teachers to pilot it for a semester and report back.
The teachers didn’t stop at the end of the semester. They kept going through the fourth quarter. That told the leadership team what they needed to know.
“We connected with the Edtomorrow team and their thinking was aligned with ours,” says Cooper. “We wanted to bring in somebody we liked.”
Three things stood out in that decision:
- First Five emails arrive in teachers’ inboxes every morning before school starts, fully prepared, no additional prep required. Teachers could greet students at the door and connect without scrambling.
- Everything in the program is research-based, evidence-grounded practice.
- Professional learning is not “one and done.” Edtomorrow models strategies, observes classrooms, provides feedback, trains new staff, and keeps building over years.
“They understand what kids and adults need,” says Jones. “First Five is the tool, but you have to pair that with great professional learning. They knocked it out of the park and energized our staff.”
“We had veteran teachers saying it was the best PD they’d ever had,” adds Cooper. “They said it made them want to come to work.”
Making Culture Operational
Full school-wide rollout began in the fall of 2023. The leadership team made expectations concrete: Every teacher would use portions of the First Five throughout the day and lead one Power Circle each week. Circle days and times were posted on classroom doors, visible and accountable.
“We made clear commitments so that we had a piece to build upon,” says Jones.
The Edtomorrow team returned regularly to model, observe, and refine. New staff received onboarding training so nothing was lost as the team expanded. Layers were added over time: staff circles, restorative practice training, cross-grade squadron groups, breakfast buddies in year two. Each addition was designed to keep the work alive rather than let it calcify into routine.
Buy-in wasn’t instant. Some staff needed more time, and district leadership support developed gradually. Jones and Cooper describe leaning on deliberate change management: naming the need, using data to make the case, asking small groups to try things first, then amplifying the voices of those who felt the difference.
“You have to stay with it, even when there are questions or grumbling,” says Jones. “Anything worth doing takes three years. We stayed steadfast.”
Before the Data Moved, the Feeling Changed
After a while, classrooms that felt calmer, students started opening up, and teachers noticed relationships forming in ways they hadn’t seen before.
The biggest shift was in how students connected with the adults around them. Where there had been gaps, children cycling in and out of rooms, and children who couldn’t name a single trusted adult, there were now consistent relationships. Students had people they could go to who actually knew them.
Discipline referrals dropped, office visits thinned, and students with the highest needs began to settle because the environment around them had changed.
“One of our fifth graders used to be in trouble weekly, but I don’t see him in my office anymore,” says Jones.
Then the data moved.
Between spring 2022 and spring 2025, every Panorama indicator climbed, every single year, without exception:
The typical annual gain in the district is 1 to 2 points. Rocky Mountain’s gains were running 10 to 20 points per year across every category. The school moved from the bottom third of district rankings to number three overall.
And even when engagement dipped slightly in spring 2024 before surging the following year, the school stayed the course. “We had one dip, but we pushed through. We put in one more piece and then it skyrocketed and held,” says Cooper.
Staff retention transformed just as dramatically. The summer before the partnership, Rocky Mountain hired 16 people, a sign of the instability that had taken hold. The following summer, they hired a handful. Since then, turnover has all but disappeared. In a district with 20,000 kids and no shortage of other options, Rocky Mountain’s teachers choose to stay.
109 New Students, Zero Disruption
The truest test of a culture is what happens when everything changes at once.
When a neighboring school closed, Rocky Mountain absorbed 109 new students (more than a fifth of its total enrollment) in a single wave. A fragile culture would have fractured under that weight.
The opposite happened.
“We onboarded those students the same way we onboard new staff,” says Cooper. “‘This is who we are. This is what we do. You’re going to love it here.’” The existing students were primed to welcome newcomers, and they did. There were no Rocky Mountain kids and Clifton kids. They were all Eagles.
“You can’t tell who’s always been here,” says Cooper. “The new students tell us: ‘My old school didn’t do this. I love it here.’”
What It Takes
Jones and Cooper are clear that this kind of change doesn’t happen on a short timeline or an easy one.
“So many people tell you what’s best for your school. For us, the answer was to use the data, trust the data, and make a move that’s right for your campus. I’m proud we did that,” says Jones.
Both leaders point to the importance of genuine implementation infrastructure, not just a program handed to teachers and left to sink or swim. They scheduled professional development before the school year started, offered stipends so teachers could focus without distraction, and kept the Edtomorrow team coming back to sustain momentum over time.
“Follow-up PD is huge,” says Cooper. “You have to keep adding something to keep it alive. We kept it shiny and exciting.”
Rocky Mountain Elementary is a Title 1 school with high poverty, high need, and all the complexity that comes with it. If belonging can become a competitive advantage there, the question worth asking is what it might do in your building.
“You can walk into our building and feel it. There is joy here, from the top of the building to the bottom. And that’s not something you always hear about in Title 1 schools like ours.”
