001[Music] Hello, welcome to our Phoenix number one governing board recap. My name is Carmen Trillo, governing board president, and I'm Deborah Gonzalez, superintendent of Phoenix number one. At our meeting on September the 11th, we had a great turnout of community members who came to speak in support of school social workers and the partnerships that ensure families and children are getting the emotional support they need to be successful in schools and in life. This is a theme we've also been hearing in our community roundts. We also heard from our community about the excitement for the field experiences our students are taking out of state. One of the community members talked about the importance of these trips in developing independence and confidence in our students as they learn to navigate the world around them. Mr. Whittle, our
002chief financial officer, provided the governing board and our public with a report on what we've been doing with the bond dollars our voters approved three years ago. We saw several images of the improvements to all of our schools, including parking areas, new shade structures, tree plantings, improved HVAC, servers, and technology upgrades that are serving the entire district. We also upgraded our buses to include an electric fleet and charging stations as well as equipment to keep our flea fleet running safely. We also saw the dramatic cafeteria upgrades at Capitol and Garfield, the playground improvements at Shaw and our family center renovation. This bond also supported renovations for safety improvements in our front lobbies at the schools and the gate and fencing repairs, lighting and technology safety, as well as elevator improvements for Windyard. The emergency demolition
003and construction at Edetta after the flood was a big part of the bond as well. And so is the work to improve our energy efficiency across the district. Garfield and Edison will receive building renovations in this bond. But all schools and our transportation department received significant infrastructure upgrades through this bond. Mrs. Bombgardner, our coordinator of social services and wellness, provided a presentation on our partnerships with Southwest Behavioral Health Services and the process for families and students to receive the services. Mrs. Bombgardner also reminded us all of the training our social workers receive and the code of ethics that they must follow to maintain their lensure and credibility with the people they serve. She also shared state statutes that social workers must follow to support suicide prevention and to obtain parental consent for health screenings. As
004part of our strategic focus on student achievement, members of the curriculum and instruction team along with two of our principles who are showing great gains at our focus schools, principal Fuentes at Edison Elementary and Principal Cells at Bthoon Elementary. They both shared on our board goal number one related to early literacy. The goal is to move third graders from a 23% pass rate on the state assessment in 2024 to a 40% pass rate in 2028. We do see reason to be optimistic about growth going forward. However, we recognize the goal that we set may be too ambitious. Some of the reasons we're optimistic include the inputs that we believe will support middle year's literacy. These include the use of new curriculum that includes highinterest complex texts that are allowing our students to engage and apply
005strategies such as annotations and questioning as they read, which is leading to class and small groupoup discussions. The deliberate teaching of writing and giving students feedback on their writing is also strengthening their ability to convey ideas clearly and effectively. And again, staff training that is differentiated for our teachers to help them learn what they need to support their learners and frequent monitoring of classrooms with the instruction coupled to support our student growth so we know what's working and what needs more attention. Finally, we looked at the superintendent guardrail to not allow the district to operate without reciprocal and effective communications between the board, district employees, and community stakeholders. Dr. Gonzalez and Miss Baker shared the interims they have in place and how they are monitoring these. The first interim is to create structured and open
006opportunities to hear from constituents including monthly meetings with established student groups, employee groups and parent groups through capesitos, site councils or PTA PTOs, the city of Phoenix and the Phoenix Community Alliance. It also includes roundts with different constituent groups such as legislators, community groups and special interest groups like arts organizations or healthcare service providers or after school programs and business and community partner lunchons. The second interim guard rail in place is to create district communications targeted to specific audiences through a variety of channels. This coffee chat recap is an example of that effort and we have already surpassed the 50% mark in the last two months compared to the year prior. But we are also sending written board meeting updates to all members of the uh business and community partners, families and staff. Our social
007media engagement is up 33%. Our website now includes translation requests that let us see the languages requested and the pages being viewed. We have had 275 translation requests and we are on pace to surpass the website views of nearly 600,000 in 2025. Our third interim guardrail is to expand regular communications to families through print and digital media. We're doing this through a messaging app called Class Dojo and we already have 84% of our families who are active. That means receiving alerts and updates from their school and the district. We also utilize emails and texts and a transportation app to alert parents about changes in bus schedules. And through word of mouth, we're making sure that all our employees have important information that they can share with families and others in the community by sending emails
008and videos like this about important district information. We want to thank everyone who was able to join in person and everybody who watched our meeting online. Your participation is very important to us. Our next governing board meeting will be on October 2nd at 5:15 p.m. in the governing board room. We will also have student performances and staff and student celebrations beginning at 4:15 p.m. prior to our board meeting. And we invite the public to join us to see the remarkable talents of the people who make Phoenix number one great. Thank you.