Moffat County, we’re back at it! Students will be back to school by the time you are reading this, and at the school district, it’s a very exciting time. Not only are we overjoyed to welcome our favorite people back into our learning environments, we’re also thrilled as always to be starting a journey with a new class of Kindergarteners.

Of course, many of these youngsters had the chance to attend our spectacular Early Childhood Center for preschool the last year or two, and for those kids, school is already “old hat” (an ancient idiom they surely are not familiar with). But the whole student body is together now, distributed across our elementary schools in Kindergarten for the first time. This is the class of 2038, folks. How wild is that? It’s crazy to picture it, these young students walking across the stage at Moffat County High School, capped and gowned, receiving their diplomas and preparing to enter the adult world. It’ll be here before we know it, but it’ll also be a long journey.

So long, in fact, that it’s worth looking backward before we look forward. This year’s class, the class of 2026, entered kindergarten in 2013. Where were you in 2013? Adults were paying attention to the Syrian Civil War, the Affordable Care Act, the election of Pope Francis, and, more locally, the Colorado floods. Peyton Manning and the Broncos were AFC Champs (we won’t mention what happened after that…), and Nikola Jokic was averaging 11 points a game for a Serbian basketball league (he’d be drafted by the Nuggets in 2014).

Where will today’s Kindergarteners be in 2038? What will Craig and Moffat County look like? What will the world look like? So much changes in 13 years. Will the Broncos make another run? Will Jokic finish his career as a Nugget? Will the Rockies ever win again? More importantly, what kind of a world will our students be entering? The 2013 graduates were pre-AI, pre-TikTok, pre-Smart Watch (some of that sounds pretty good…), and they were emerging together with “Big Data.” Lots has changed since then. What will change in another 13 years?

What will our Kindergarteners’ job prospects be like? What will healthcare, manufacturing, technology, energy, hospitality, food production, agriculture look like? There’s so much new coming for these kiddos, and we’ll need them to be ready when they graduate to enter the world and help us make progress together.

And, really, that’s what school is for. It’s why we’re here, because We Believe in Moffat County School District. Because We Believe that the future is bright, and that our students will make it brighter. Because We Believe that school is where you prepare for the world, where you connect, learn, practice, and develop skills necessary to solve problems and make things that matter. We Believe in Moffat County School District as the right place at the right time for these kids to be educated, inspired, and prepared to thrive.

Good luck to all our students, new and returning. Go get ’em, Bulldogs. Welcome back to school.