Valyria consistently participates and engages in meaningful conversations. Her always positive attitude and empathy towards others helps encourage others to speak up and share. Valyriia continues to be an exceptional role model. Timothy is earning our library citizenship award which honors a student who makes outstanding use of the library. Timothy exemplifies initiative and responsibility. He consistently shows respect for the library, caring for books, returning materials promptly, and ensuring they are ready for others to use. He regularly goes above and beyond to leave the space better than he found it. His thoughtful actions make the library an enjoyable place for everyone. Thank you, Tim. Matthew is receiving the library legacy award tonight, which recognizes a student whose long-term conduct has positively influenced the library culture. A student who sets a standard for courteous behavior and integrity in shared spaces and shows high responsibility in library. Through his consistent courtesy, quiet leadership, and genuine love of learning, Matthew champions a welcoming library culture.
That had to be renegotiated. Uh the we've had an administrator retire. Kim Dert is the principal at Darcy and and she is uh retiring at the end of this school year. We've had a better than expected stock stop loss loss insurance outcome. So, you know, we budget back in December uh based on projections and now we have new projections that are much more favorable. Uh we had to at that time also identify to adopt the the budget that the board uh recommended. There were $195,000 in reductions that we identified through consolidations, but we didn't really name them at that time. We were still um working through that process. Uh and then title one guidance. So this is uh a place where title one is a federal grant that um is allocated through the state to Cheshure to support uh high needs areas. Uh it's in our case we have about $107,000 allocated and upon review uh there are rules about how you can use that money.
In the fall, she will be attending Scripps College in Claremont, California to study biology on the premed track. It is my honor to introduce our student body president for the class of 2026, Miss Cadence Carlson. [applause] [cheering] >> Good morning, Eagles. Congratulations. We made it. Today, we aren't together just to receive a diploma, but to celebrate how far we have come. Though this is our high school graduation, it really signifies our entire educational journey. It's crazy to think that only 12 years ago today, we were just completing our first year of school. And this moment was unimaginable. This moment we are in right now will be one we remember for the rest of our lives. And after today, we will turn the page and begin our next chapter. Not just taking with us the memories from senior year, but the memories from all 12 years of school.
Um again, governing board president call the meeting to order. Today's date is Tuesday, May 12th, 2026. As I call the meeting to order, I do want to of course take a moment to acknowledge and express the district board the dis the board's support for the district's overall vision and mission statements. Again, if you're not aware, our vision statement is our students will be loved, encouraged, and prepared to take on the world by embracing our HIMD. Our mission statement is we create healthy, inspiring, motivating, developing, achieving graduates. And our purpose statement is we create positive academic impact on every child's life every day with an additional commitment to support the alum culture and language. And with that again we want to always encourage the use of the alum in and as much as possible when where you feel most comfortable. Um it is definitely one of the things we want to continue to uplift not only as members of the community um but as board members who strongly support the values and the core mission of which we are uh representatives of and as guest as this school district is a guest on Tonatam land.
I'm proud of you, Bryson. Thanks. >> Congratulations, Bryson. And we're we're glad to have you here tonight. All right, we got uh Coach Kluff with uh quite the eclectic outfit on tonight. He's going to recognize our athlete of the month. >> Thank you. Could we have Kaden Edentine please come up? >> I'm going to read I'm going to read what uh Coach White had to say about him. He gave me a write up in an email here. You can see it's legit. He really said these things. So, Kaden Edgington is being recognized for an outstanding um month of April for Blueridge baseball. After missing the first month of the season due to an injury, Kaden put in the work to get himself back on the field and quickly become one of the team's leaders on the mound. His determination and work ethic showed in in the way he battled back and competed every time he stepped on the field.
Earth Day and Greenhouse Grand Reopening, there's pictures there, was held on April 22nd. And I just really can't thank our staff, our Green Valley Rotary, um, for all of the energy and time that it takes to make the magic happen here on our campus. Jenna, um, has been in charge of so many of the details and the logistics, even from the eighth grade civics trip to all of these um, activities that we've had to make sure that we look good. And she has definitely helped us look great. So, thank you, Miss Jenna, for that. Also, there's more pictures of Earth Day. So, you'll see we actually even had Mr. Mum Schubert brush up on some of his teaching skills because he was helping in the greenhouse with the planting on Earth Day along with Mrs. Blum. And we can't thank her enough for all of her time and efforts and what she has done here at Continental for us as well.
When done well, monitoring supports the district to buy modeling reflective leadership, clarifying strategies and next steps, setting clear priorities across the system, and providing continuous feedback for improvement. This is how we hold ourselves accountable to the outcomes our students deserve. This is how governance truly serves its community. >> And with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Olguin Pombo to go ahead and start our progress monitor report for goal four report three. President Carino, members of the board and Superintendent and we're excited to present goal number four. So I'm going to invite Dr. Dodds, Karen and Sarah Beth George, who's our coordinator for literacy. And then we also have a couple of our coaches in the audience. So thank you for being here. So for goal four is our literacy goal for third grade. And we want to increase our reading proficiency for third graders and on the state assessment we want to move from 18% proficient to 41%.
Well, we're really, really proud of you. Um I don't So, how many books did you have to read for the battles? >> 12 in total. >> 12 total books. I don't think I've read that many in my life, so I'm We're really proud of you. We know that this type of uh competition is tough. They ask you some really difficult questions, very specific to parts of each book, and it's up to a team to make sure that you get that right answer. And you guys obviously represented Gilbert Public Schools extremely well. So, we're very proud of you. Please give them one more hand. If you guys would shake hands with the board, stay up here, and then we'll take a group picture. All of you, just turn around and go down the line. Right here in the middle. And then, come on down. Perfect. We'll gather around here.
We we do have a slot to speak a little bit. I said, "Just say something good and you won't be lying." Okay. Yeah. Just say something good about it. I said, "She's a legend. There's something good about her. You won't be lying." >> Well, Mr. Brown, I didn't actually speak. >> Oh, you? Oh, okay. >> So, there was some challenges. Was like, "Do I have enough time to get miked up and all this stuff?" So, I just passed respectfully to keep it on time. Okay. >> So, but still the presence was there. That's what matters that you stepped up. It was a last minute call to you >> and I wore my baseball jersey. >> Wow. >> I will tell you what we've done though with the complex. So, I was out of state and the athletic department, the high school athletic department put on Facebook the link that you can uh view it and I I could watch an inning or two of the game while it was going on.
Um, you know, I know that we nickel and dimed and traded 0.1 here and 0.2 there for FTEs. Um, and unfortunately band was not part of that discussion. Um, so I know Berlin hopes to keep their 0.4 band director. Um, but as of right now VES doesn't have band for fourth and fifth grade next year, which I think is a bit of a travesty. Um, and so I know there were some discussions alluding to efforts to get a 2 and 1/2 override next year as we have shaved things off in the past years. We don't have a middle school language teacher now. Um, we combined tech and library to one person and now that's no longer certified person. Now it's a para. We had health teacher that that got eliminated as well among other things that can be found in the April 7th um, presentation by Aaron.
Marley is being celebrated for being an outstanding student ambassador in recognition of her exceptional contributions during author day. Her confidence, organization, and leadership helped make the event a true success. As a student ambassador, she demonstrated outstanding responsibility by confidently introducing our visiting author before each class presentation and playing a key role in coordinating coordinating both the lunch event and the book signing activities. Thanks to her efforts among some others, everything ran smoothly and successfully. Nice job. I think our last group award goes to Rory Angel, Ellie Palmer, Sarina, and Jordan. These four students all had exceptional years as beginning fourth grade band students. In addition to excelling every week as leaders in their own cohort of students, they progressed well beyond their grade level expectations. only four months removed from the day that they opened their cases for the first time and they made their first sounds.
like anything else, you um are directed not to use that money to supplant other things that were already in your budget. So um if we've been buying the same books for 10 years, we can't use that $107,000 to buy the same books next year and um just cut our costs by $107,000. we have to what's called supplement. So you can't supplant your budget, you have to supplement. You have to go above and beyond for that high needs population with that money allocated. So, upon review and our operating projections, um there was $107,000 identified that were required to be added to supplement and we had to find that money in our operating budget to to cover it basically. Um >> so, Jeff, >> I'm sorry. I I was just gonna say that you you've got this balance scale sort of idea going on where sometimes things are above, sometimes they're below.
From the first time you learned to stand in line to figuring out how to mute yourself on a Zoom call, we have learned so much. Think about the time you talked to a stranger you can now call a friend. Your first game or competition with your team. Or the first time a teacher encouraged you to pursue which you're passionate about. Those are the things that make school so special. Pine Creek is more than just four walls in a bunch of classrooms. It is defined by those people within it and the connections that we have all made with each other these past four years. Sure, we may have had to fight for our lives to get out of the parking lot, and we've all found ourselves trying to avoid eye contact when we realize we forgot our school ID, but at the end of the day, the memories we carry with us are forged around the connections with our friends and teachers.
We also want to make sure that that's an acknowledgement that we share uh on behalf of the board to this community. I'll turn it over to Mr. Sabala Faroo. Hi, >> Kathleen Vance. >> Sylvia Hendricks, >> Adam Ree Stevens, >> Dion Leonard, >> present. >> That completes roll. >> Okay, we do have a quorum. Um, we'll continue with this evening's agenda.
In April, he started four games, finished with a 2 and2 record, had a 1.8 erra. That's an earn run average right here. and 38 strikeouts. Cadence's hard work, leadership, and dependability have made a huge impact on the team and set a great example for those around him. He was also honored for the region pitcher of the year as well. So, did an amazing job. Kaden had a a pretty serious injury this year to his back and he wasn't able to do all the things that he wanted to do. And one of the things that you see these kids struggle with is they they want to play so bad as they come back before they're ready and they ended up hurting themselves a little more. Kaden was super patient. Uh stuck with his coaches, had a whole workout planned for him when he got ready, got back in the weight room, hit it hard and then came out and did a great job for his team and is a leader on our campus.
Our A+ of excellence celebration. Was it a good one, boys and girls? >> Yes. Thank you. So you can see there all of the support that we have and I heard from community members and even um Dr. Matty Venezuela called me after and he said I've been to a lot of A+ celebrations but yours was topnotch. He said it was organized, it was classy, it wasn't too long, it wasn't too short. The proper people were recognized. The kids taking the lead. Everybody thought that was phenomenal. So again, hats off to Mrs. Webas, Mr. Nathan, to Jenna, Christie, the whole entire team for all of their help in our getting our balloon arches, our posters done. So, that's why we're A+. Um, career day was another great annual event. So, I want to thank our 301 committee members and all of our support staff who again helped make this event a huge success.
Last year, we our goal on the state assessment was 22%. As you can see, we went down uh to 13%. So, this year we are need to double that or have more growth than we did in the past two catch up to that 31% for the state assessment. I'm going to turn over to Dr. Dodds-Carey to go over the data, and then um Sarah Beth George will share um our steps that we've taken, our inputs, and then our next steps. Uh good evening, members of the board. Uh Sarah Beth and I are grateful that for the opportunity to share with you the information we have specific to um our data that we've gathered from our December assessments. Interim measure 4.1, as you can see, the percentage of third graders who score proficient on the DNA English language arts post-test will increase from 19% in May of 2025 to 31% in May of 2026.
There you go. Well done. >> [applause] >> Next up, can I have Dr. Matt Moix up here? >> [applause] >> Wow. You wore a tie. Like, I see this guy almost every day. You're looking sharp. Attaboy, good for you. Well, Matt, you're here because you are the AASPE 2025 Keith Perkins Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient. Congratulations. >> [applause] >> Dr. Matt Moix was honored with this year's Keith Perkins Lifetime Achievement Award. He has made a positive impact on school psychology in Arizona over more than two decades of exceptional service. Dr. Moix is an advocate at both the district and state levels, most recently leveraging his expertise to represent practitioners on the State Board of Education Special Education Evaluation subcommittee, and successfully leading the committee to consider impact of new regulations being proposed. Within our school district, Matt champions best practices for students, families, and colleagues. He is described by colleagues as having strong communication skills, an excellent ethical code, and an exceptional uh domain knowledge.
So if parents can't make the game, they can view the, you know, view the game online. It's really great the technology. And >> did we win that night? >> No. >> Oh, okay. >> No, we played um what's that? Oak. Yeah. Started out unfortunately we didn't get the W um on that night. >> Oh, wow. >> That's okay. There more more games to play. >> Oh, yeah. >> Yeah. >> So, I just want to make a comment as we've talked about naming. I've already received a few emails from various people in the community that would like to see, you know, certain things named after certain people. So, I'm just going to remind the community there is a process that is involved with naming. I don't get to pick it, you know, and the board necessarily doesn't get to pick it either, but there is a process per our board policy that a name could be brought before the board.
Um, and I know there's cuts everywhere that are being felt by people or not yet. Um, but I was hoping that by either 0.1 or 0.2 FTE that maybe we could float the cost um, from a fund that we wouldn't usually do from operating costs. Uh, just in hopes to maintain at least a joint band one day a week. So kids would have to >> [clears throat] >> find other solutions for the lessons and learning, but at least there would be a joint band that they could come together and still have a band experience and then hopes that the year after we'd be able to reinstate that in a more permanent way. So, from the April presentation, um I guestimated what 0.1 0.2 FTEs of the band director would be. Um so, 0.1 would be about 7,683 and 0.2 would be about 15,366. Which of course, as I said, it's a guestimate.