So what um that's on page it's got to be around the enrollment page. that is on page five. Um the first slide at the top, uh you see like Soderman Way, we have 20 students out of that's um that's one that you know Vin and I drove out there and that's a condo complex and we said now we're univer unilaterally moving them. They're supposed to go to Highland. We had to move them to Chapman. We just don't have the space at at Highland to accommodate that. Um, so that's that's the bulk of the students, but you know, um, Hazel Drive, River Point at Stonebridge Court. Um, so we have some some folks being moving. A a lot of this stuff has not really been opened yet. So, um, we anticipate growth over the summer. And we track this uh we have um this table that we pull um and periodically update it um as our enrollment grows.
they say I am. If you would have asked them two years ago, they would have said she is, right? And it's kind of the same when you know someone comes home like your own kid and you're like, "Well, whose responsibility is that?" And he's like, "Well, it's mine." You know, like, and he may have grew up thinking, "It's yours." So, it gives some accountability talk to our students to be more involved in their own learning. And that was really fun for us in this group of student interviews. You know, kids said that they were in charge of their learning. They were responsible for their learning. It's their teacher's responsibility to teach them new things and guide them through the process, but ultimately what they put into the work is what they're going to get out. Those are fourth graders. So, um it's really exciting to start to hear some of that emerge without being prompted.
So I'm just trying in my own words that this 134 whatever it is students projected for next year that increase is based largely on the new construction going on in town. It's based on the number of students who've moved in since the last time they got the enrollment update. So since October one, we've had a lot of students move in. Okay. And some of, you know, 50 of them are from, you know, those places. We have other students from other places. And then based on that trajectory, Yeah. they, you know, project out how many students we're going to have aside from aside from the one-off house that goes up on an open parcel or something, right? It's based on known developments that are happening. So this doesn't include like the development uh over behind CA there. I forget. OV or whatever. What what's the Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, right?
So, that's really good. Um teachers are collaborating and designing tasks that are both rigorous and addressing the full extent of the standards. Our teams at Desert Valley are only required to collaborate in PLC once a week, but I'm sure that you'll find them all together in their rooms together every single day of the week. Um, they're heavily reliant on one another and their expertise where I think, you know, a few years ago, you might have come in and everybody's kind of frantically working or copying different things in different directions. Whereas now, it's very cohesive. It's very tight. It's very focused work. Um, and it's measured every single day and not even at the day level. It's measured within the lesson. They are now saying, "I'm going to pose this question to the class. This is what I'm expecting them to say. Script it out. If I don't hear that, what am I going to do?
On Academy Road, the new houses back there. Yeah, that the those houses. It's not um that's not factored in here. This is only multi-unit. So, there are other people that have moved into those single family homes that you see cropping up around town, too. Yeah. That are not tracked in here. Yeah. And there's a good number of them since I've just been around in the last few weeks. Exactly. Bush. All right. Thank you. Yep. All right. I'll try schools. I'll try and crank through here. School modernization. Uh the real highlight there if you if you haven't seen Mike Salamini's drone video on uh the website. Go to our homepage bottom left. School modernization. Scroll down. You you have uh videos. Uh the March drone video is really cool. Uh we are cranking on both locations. The other thing that's really neat is on March 26th, OMG, the builder along with Arcadus will be doing a presentation for our Norton students on the geothermal wells and what are geothermal wells and and you know the the they'll take a look at a well and it'll be kind of really cool.
How do I make it better?" And they talk about that. What are we going to do? I don't want to spend 60 more minutes teaching something that they don't get in the first 15, right? And let them go and try to figure it out on their own. None of that's going to happen. And you know, that's really why we think by solidifying that stronger tier one instruction in this way, it should lower our need for so much intervention. We have too many kids leaving one grade grade grade level not proficient enough to access the next. So in order to do that, it takes time to build it backwards, almost more time than it takes to build it the opposite way. So our hope is that we continue to see that build backwards a little bit. in our cohort data, where our kids are now is still percentages higher than where they were last year at that time.
Uh we're trying to set that up for students and other buildings too to take a field trip out to the north end when they ultimately finish the wells out there too. um CEF fundraiser, the trivia contest sold out for that's uh April 5th. Um should be a lot of fun. Today's workshop I attended um Marlene and I attended a workshop um where Jonathan Height spoke this morning. Uh the governor spoke, the um former secretary of education Miguel Cardona spoke. uh and I had a chance to engage in a really interesting conversation with uh Jonathan height about the work that we're doing and um you know some of his perspective on on what's going on and you know the the presentation he gave was was really compelling the same way the book is very compelling about the correlation um he would tell you causation and it's a very you know he's got a great argument between the uh introduction of smartphones for kids and the proliferation of all sorts of problems for kids academic, behavioral, psychiatric just it's it and it's not an American problem and I think that's why he he leans heavy on the causation argument.
So even though they took a backslide from like 39 to 31, they were in the 20s last year at that time, you know, as third graders. So we kind of see like it's not great, but it's still an overall improvement from the year before. Then students are setting goals, tracking them, and identifying their individual needs in order to continuously improve. This is probably one of my favorite things that we've done uh this year at Desert Valley is our third and fourth grade students track and goal set for every benchmark they take. They track, they goal set, they talk about what's going to make me really strong in reading. What do I need to do daily to be better at that? Um you know, Heidi likes to use this analogy. I'm going to go out and run a marathon, but I don't run any of the days.
It's it's universal uh places where kids have access to smartph phones all over the world. Sungu um was the first person to point that out to me when he came here, our visitor from Korea, like when he read Anxious Generation, he's like, "Yeah, this sounds like home." Um so, a really powerful workshop. Um and tomorrow we have another really powerful workshop. uh uh Marlene and uh Kevin and and others have put a lot of really Leslie D'Angelo as our secretary in in Marlene's office has been insane uh with the work that she's done to to help plan this event for tomorrow on artificial intelligence. And so you see this juxtaposition of technology and how challenging that can be and how powerful it can be and how do we thread the needle is an organization to best support our students. This week I had the first report of a student at Cheshure High wearing the AI glasses.
I show up. it's not going to be very successful. So, uh, when we work with our third and fourth graders, it says, "Well, I want to grow by 10%." Okay, but how are you going to do that? I'm gonna read more. Well, is that going to make it work? And then they start to think, well, reading more is not going to automatically get me there. So, they start thinking about what can I do in class every day? What can I do at home every day? How can I be more involved in my own learning? And we actually goal set all the way to kindergarten. So, our kindergarteners set goals for themselves in dibbles. They color this like really cute little bar when we progress monitor them. If they make their goal, they color their bar. They move their clip. So, we're trying to bring that practice all the way down to the bottom.
So I mean you looked down you can take pictures of whatever is in front of you and calculate things and uh it's 300 bucks. is within our family's price range to be able to do that. So, how do we, you know, now we're going to be talking about that in policy, too. Where does that fit fit into things? Um, so, um, how do we really leverage AI to make learning so powerful? You saw the work that our science team did and, um, you know, that's the sort of intersection of complex thinking and social emotional learning that we want for our kids. AI can help us with that. So is it's a professional impact. It's it's a student impact. So tomorrow will be really awesome. It'll be kind of convocation light. And I want to close with um I'm sure you guys are all aware of this, but this is board member appreciation month.
But I think this is my last slide. Last one. Oh, what changes have I noticed? More collaboration among students and teachers. uh balanced leadership which is really important for me because um most of the time as a principal you think that you're responsible for absolutely every single thing all day every day right empowerment empowers teachers to take on more responsibility in what they're doing every single day in the model of instruction instead of kind of being like well I taught what the curriculum said like I taught what the book said that's why it didn't work you know what I It removes that barrier. It's like, no, if that's not meeting the student need, how do we change it? What are you doing? How are you collaborating? How are you going to move that forward? So, it brings like a more to a balance that we're all in the same work together to move it all forward.
Um so I know that's why you ran for the board. Yeah. I'm doubling your Christmas bonus this year, Tony. Um, but we do have, you know, we we do try and take care of you guys because the amount of time and energy you spend on this is incredible and it's in so valuable for us and for our community. Um, you're the really the battery that helps keep us running and um, so we do have gifts for you that we can hand out at the end. So, thank you so much for what you do. Thought you were going to say you do it for the swag. I thought he was going to say the checks in the mail, but fair enough. Thank you, Dr. Solen.
It doesn't only hinge on one grade level taking a test or this person being there every day. It's really about how we move the school forward together. So, student ownership of the work, a vision for change, um, and just overall school improvement. For us at Del Desert Valley over the last couple of years, we've worked very, very hard at that vision and just driving towards it. I think that's really what pulled us along the way in the last couple of years towards the A for the first time ever. Um, just like the continuous look at improving this opportunity to learn for kids. So, we're great at growing kids. We're still working on proficiency. So, we want to maintain growth and increase proficiency. That's our vision for change and overall school improvement. We can be better every single day. So, we take on small tasks, focus on them, get better on them, and then move on.
Any questions, comments from the board for Dr. Solen. Great. Awesome. Um, old business. Uh, it looks like there is no old business here. New business. We have a healthy food certification. If you can just um fill us in here, Mr. Masiana on this new item or I will be glad Taylor. I will be glad to turn this over. Gotcha. To Emily Taylor as a sign of something else I don't do anymore. Yeah, I know. I know. Save the best for last. Save the best for last. And I know I'm now standing between you and your board member GIF. So I'll do the abbreviated version. But the healthy food certification is actually just something that we do annually. It's every year. We've been participating for at least 10 years now. And what it is is a certification that determines uh the types of food items we sell to students separate from the reimburseable meals that we're providing them every day.
One thing at a time, get good at one thing at a time. So, um, Mr. De Lima, Miss Sabi, come on up. I just wanted to have them share what their experience is like working in the model of instruction. Something that's Mr. Del Lima teaches fourth grade and um M teaches third grade and uh they're actually a partner pair. We do some peerbased mentoring too at Desert Valley. So they like challenge each other. So he gets to work with his fourth grade peers and then she gets to work with her third grade peers, but they also work together because guess what? What she teaches leads to what he teaches. and when he needs to help kids that are in a lower grade, she can help him, too. So, we kind of build that in a little bit, but I'll have them talk about their experience with empowerment.
Um and it's basically do they rise to the bar of these Connecticut nutrition standards. It's only applies to foods that are sold, not things that are given to students. It's not applicable to adults and what we sell to adults. Um and it doesn't apply to field trips. It's things that are on the school premises. So we participate in this program. talking about all the budget uh items tonight because we are reimbured 10 cents for every lunch that we serve which is about 20k in revenue for us from this initiative. So um it's you know a small chunk of change but we've also been talking about the unpaid meal balance being 21,000. This is $20,000. So um and what we're going to talk about and I'll go through there's three very specific motions that we need to pass tonight and I'll just kind of very briefly walk you through each one of them.
Good evening. I'm Miss um Devid from Desert Valley. So, as a teacher, implementing IE inside the classroom really made a great impact, not just only how students collaborate and but right now how they coach one another. And we use we always use data that we gathered from the students to help us to plan better lesson plan that will help us uh that will help us to help the student hit the full extent of our standards and also if it is during the lesson then the data that we that I gathered from the students will during monitoring will help me to determine which students I need to pull pull out to work with me during tier 2 instruction. So overall I implementation made a great impact not just only to the students but also for me as a teacher. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Um hi um I'm Mr.
Uh there's the one motion to participate and then there's two motions for a food and a beverage exemption. I'll explain that in a minute. Uh but just some comparative data in this school year there were 189 eligible school districts for the healthy food certification and 182 partic uh 802 of the 189 eligible districts decided to participate which is about 96.3% participation and that includes 130 public school districts. So people tend to renew their healthy food certification. Uh from 2324 to 2425, 99.5% of school districts renewed for the following year. And in the past 20 years, the HFC participation has increased from 50.8% to 96.3%. So we're seeing a lot of participation in healthy foods uh certification. So the three motions for tonight, the first one is participating in the HFC initiative. It means that all food items we sell on campus uh are not are not exempted from Connecticut nutrition standards, which is a higher standard than just the the regular reimburseable meals.
Dimma Mr. I'm a fourth grade um teacher. So as a teacher um for me I'm going to start with coaching. So coaching is inval invaluable for navigating for complexities as a teacher. So it offers um guidance, support and space growth and reflection. So ultimately leading to a more um confident and effective teaching practice. So I am a Filipino teacher. I've been teaching for nine years in the Philippines and um I came here in the United States of America and be a cultural exchange teacher. So I applied most of the not most I am most most of the methods of teaching that I learned in college education and I I innovated um some strategies of teaching that I learned also in my college education. But when I get here got here in the United States of America for like for any other new teachers um I struggled but on that on that year it was also a lucky year.