001Hello, my name is Carmen Trillo. I currently serve as the president of the Phoenix number one governing board. And I'm Deborah Gonzalez. I serve as the superintendent for Phoenix number one. Uh before we get started on our board recap, I just want to welcome our newest board member, Justin Graham. And I want to give a shout out to our students from LOL Elementary who performed for us during our celebrations. And they were so fantastic, we asked them to do an encore. [music] >> Our students are so talented. We also got to celebrate our November star award winners from Lel. Next, uh members of your superintendent student advisory team participated in our meeting. What are they working on? Our students from Bthoon on the student advisory are Joanna Mendoza and Zoe Chavez. They are working on
002action research to understand how we increase the sense of belonging that students have in schools. And so they're going to be surveying their student their fellow students and um doing interest surveys as well so that we can have a better sense of what it takes to create a sense of belonging in every school. At our recent governing board meeting, the board members voted to accept an offer to sell our plant services property at First Street and Grant. This is a cash sale and includes a two-year lease back, which allows us to remain on the property until our new facility is built. We're often asked why we would sell this property but not our schools. Would you remind us why this makes sense financially for us? Absolutely. And this comes back to Arizona school finance. We
003cannot use bond dollars for a non- studentent building. And so with the sale of this property, it allows us to have funds that we can put into rebuilding plant services. This allows us to preserve the bond dollars for all the things that we want to do for our schools. And because it's a cash sale that's slightly over the appraised value, that cushion of anything that we don't spend in the building of plant services allows us to put that right back into the properties we're excited to start renovating like Bthoon and LOL and the Filillmore property. So in addition to the financial sense that this sale makes, why else is it important for us to think about relocating the plant services? The facility itself is outdated and staying at the current location creates safety and efficiency
004challenges due to traffic and railroad crossings. Renovating it would cost at least 16 million and we can't fund those through bonds or mlocating allows us to build a modern efficient facility that better serves our staff, students and community and our staff deserve to have great facilities. >> Absolutely. Safety was another major focus of the meeting. District staff shared a comprehensive overview of our safety planning, including exterior safety, interior safety, and personal safety supports for students and staff. Please walk us through how our safety framework is structured. So, our safety framework has four parts to it. The first part is assessing and working together to create a plan. That plan is done with community members at the district level as well as at school sites and with um professionals in the safety industry. The next part
005of that is to actually then create clear tiered responses so that in any kind of an emergency from a medical situation to an evacuation to a shelter in place or to a cyber incident we know exactly what the steps are in terms of how we respond to that. Then we also have ongoing training in drills. So all staff receive annual training in safety and then specialists receive specialized training in their fields and students and staff participate in regular drills throughout the year. The fourth part of our safety plan is really coming back and then assessing what is the continuous improvement cycle. So every time there's a drill, what worked? What needs to be tweaked? What needs to be made better? Any kind of an incident, we get better every time and that's how our plan
006flows through that. So why is that important for our community to understand that level of detail? >> Safety is foundational to learning and our students, families, and staff deserve environments where they feel protected, supported, and prepared. And the board remains fully committed to continuous improvement in this area. We also gave our update on board goals one and four, which are specifically looking at our literacy outcomes for grades three and eight on our AASA. So tell us some of the highlights that you remember from that presentation. >> Uh we heard about strong progress in classroom practice including a greater focus on vocabulary strategies, ongoing instructional coaching and the impactful work of our English immersion endorsed teachers. Uh we're also seeing me we're also seeing meaningful collaboration between English language interventionists and instructional coaches which is strengthening
007professional learning across our schools. uh what areas are we continuing to focus on as next steps? >> So, in terms of next steps, some of the areas that we're really going to focus on is giving our students more of those structured opportunities to interact with each other using the vocabulary that they're learning, but also being able to practice using the language in very structured ways. So, it's not a one-word answer. It's a more in-depth response. We're also making sure that our students are getting regular feedback on the vocabulary that they're working on and the vocabulary routines that they're practicing and that we're giving additional training for our teachers and our leaders at each of our campuses so they know what to look for and how to continue that coaching. This kind of reflection is really
008going to help move our students to the very next level. The board also reviewed progress on superintendent guardrail number four, which ensures that district resources are allocated equitably through a sitebased budgeting process. Please share how this guardrail is showing up in our work right now. So, guardrail 4 focuses on expanding student supports and equitable access across the district to make sure that every student is getting enriching learning experiences. So specifically, interim guardrail 4.1 is centering on tutoring at focus schools and we're able to provide focus training for uh families with our family and community engagement specialists through a partnership with the new teacher project. In addition to that, we have interim guard rail 4.2 two, which is focusing on making sure that our schools are getting civic funds to support initiatives that help them bring
009new ideas to their campuses. So, the district is allocating 25% of all district revenues back to the schools and we're just we're distributing it in a way that is making sure that schools with the greatest need and the least amount of access have the greatest amount prevent presented to them. And finally, interim guard rail 4.3 is expanding access to field experiences. This allows every child to have at every grade level a field experience that is geared toward curriculum that they're studying and that's funded from the district and from many of our contributing partners. Um, hearing about that was really important for me at this board meeting. Uh, really makes me appreciate the work you guys are doing. Um, this work is so critical to our district because allowing uh properly alloc allocating our resources ensures
010that every student, no matter their school, has access to the opportunities, supports, and experiences they need. Thank you for watching our governing board recap from December 11, 2025. Our next governing board meeting will be on Thursday, January 22nd, 2026 at 5:15 p.m. in the governing board room. All are welcome to join us in person or virtually. And if you're able, please join us early at 4:15 to be able to see our students and our teachers who are doing amazing work. Have a nice holiday break, however you celebrate, and happy new year. Thank you.