Before the school bell rings at Rifle Middle School, you may find some sixth-grade band students on the playground with their shiny new instruments in hand.

They don't know many notes yet, and that hasn't stopped them.

“They know three notes, and that means we know three songs,” new band teacher Ben Sevy said.

Some have even started marching outside the school, playing whatever they can.

None of the seventh graders sitting in the seventh-grade Rifle Middle School literacy classes were alive on Sept. 11, 2001.

Twenty-five years later, they are learning what happened that day, what followed, and what remembering it can mean for their generation.

On Thursday, Sept. 10, students from Chris Moon and Nancy Hauer’s English Language Arts classes put that learning into action. Rifle Middle School partnered with High Country Volunteers to assemble 911 activity kits for Project Sunshine as part of the September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance.

Four years after Garfield Re-2 turned to its community to help chart a path forward, the district continues to see steady academic progress.

Garfield Re-2 earned its highest overall score on record on the preliminary Colorado 2026 District Performance Framework and received an Accredited rating for the second consecutive year.

The district earned 59.7% of the points available on the preliminary 2026 framework, up from 56.9% last year and 8.7 points higher than in 2022.

RIFLE, Colo. — Following months of community conversations and long-range planning, the Garfield Re-2 Board of Education voted unanimously at their regular August 26, 2026 school board meeting to place a bond measure and mill levy override before voters in the November 3, 2026 election.

The two measures address different needs facing the district. The mill levy override would provide additional local funding for staff salaries. The bond would extend the district’s current bond, without imposing a new tax, to address school facilities, learning spaces, staff housing, early childhood education and technology infrastructure.

Board member Cassie Haskell summed up the distinction during Wednesday’s discussion.

“I just wanted it to be very clear: the mill levy override is for salaries. The bond is for buildings and infrastructure,” Haskell said. “We can’t use the bond for salaries.”

The Board’s action places both questions before voters. Voters will decide each measure separately in November.

RIFLE, Colo. - Garfield Re-2 School District has been named one of Colorado's 18 Attendance Challenge Champions after reducing chronic absenteeism by 55.6% over four years.

The district's chronic absenteeism rate fell from 40.1% in the 2021-22 school year to 17.8% in 2025-26. That 22.3 percentage-point decline puts Garfield Re-2 well ahead of the Colorado Department of Education's goal to reduce chronic absenteeism by more than 50% by 2028.

Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing at least 10% of the school year. In 2025-26, Garfield Re-2's chronic absenteeism rate was nearly 10 percentage points below Colorado's statewide rate of 27.5%.