001meeting to order first we have mku cheerleaders will be saying the Pledge of Allegiance can you please stand I pled of alance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation godible andice for all thank you next we have roll call Madame President miss Patricia Jimenez present governing board member Miss Maria Hernandez pres governing board member Mr Rudy Santa Cruz president governing board member Mr Harry garwell and governing board member Miss Maria Guzman is out Madame President may please have a couple of seconds while we try to get a hold of Mr garwell yeah governing board member Mr Harry garwell yes okay thank you um Rudy and Harry can you hear me yes okay thank you yeah I can hear you Patricia I'm uh I'm at
002the state capital so I'll stay on as long as I can but yes I can hear you okay thank you next we have approval of November 16 2023 regular governing board meeting is there a motion so move is there a second second call for the vote governing board member Mr Rudy Santa Cruz may I please have your vote I and governing board member Mr gerwell may I please have your verbal vote I okay motion carries next approval of October 12 2023 23 public hearing and regular governing board meeting minutes is there a motion so so move is there a second second any discussion changes hearing none call for the vote Mr R board member Mr Rudy Santa Cruz may I please have your verbal vote I governing board member Mr Harry gerwell may I please
003have your verbal vote I okay motion uh passes next we have um govering board members reports Mr gell your first yes Madam president just a couple of items uh first of all I just want to acknowledge the great uh job that the staff did and the presentations they made at the a Alis a couple weeks ago I thought it was a phenomenal representation of the Isaac Elementary School District and all the projects and programs that are going on right now so I wanted to give a shout out to the staff and also to my colleagues and Dr vura and our partners in presenting um our esperansa model and then secondly I just want to share with you that recently a report came out for charter schools and surprisingly enough Arizona is the poorest performing Charter
004School in 22 States so irregardless of all the funding that goes into charter schools and with the vouchers you know they're not performing as well as our their counterparts around the country so I think there has to be a significant um re-evaluation of where we're at with Charter Schools and also with the uh Universal vouchers but that's a subject for another another time uh and then finally I'm very proud about the fact that we will be attending the Arizona School boards association annual conference uh December 6 through the 8th and I'll be there representing n school district when we're taking the vote on the new executive committee and also uh for the board of directors positions there Madame President that will be the end of my uh report thank you thank you very much uh
005next is myself moris um thank you very much for hosting us um I love being here um I I always said this I just love having the meetings and seeing the presentations so I look forward um to seeing the presentations I just want to kind of make a quick little note like Mr G will mentioned um um we were at the Arizona Association of Latino and administration and super intendent and it was very um nice to see several of our admin staff uh presenting uh and presenting the good things that we're doing here at the Isaac School District I also want to uh recognize he also want to thank our superintendent Dr Ventura Dr Ventura has been with us 11 years and my 20e sum of service he has been the longest superintendent that we
006have had here in the district and that says a lot I personally admire Dr Ventura not only by being a leader um he truly cares about the community he sees our community he is our community and he got the 2023 outstanding superintendent of the year so please help me give him a round of applause for that and one thing uh you know the superintendent he's very humble he doesn't like to be in the spotlight but you know he's Isaac and he's representing Isaac so thank you very much um for for being here for choosing to be at Isaac because I know you could be be someplace else but you choose to be here um very emot like not emotional but I'm very honored to see the great things that we're doing you know the heart
007of Isaac everything that's going on I sometimes it's hard for me to attend but I see I'm telling you I'm a Facebook fan you know I see all the everything that you guys put out there all the parents all the Partnerships that we have is just amazing and what they do for our community and that's because of your great leadership Dr vuda so thank you very much and I want to wish you um happy H Happy Thanksgiving we still have one more meeting to our holiday so Happy Thanksgiving please be safe enjoy with your families and I look forward like I said to our presentation and thank you for hosting us I truly appreciate and thank you our cafeteria ladies our managers for the wonderful Thanksgiving dinner and that's my report uh Miss Guzman's not
008here today Mr Santa Cruz yes thank you uh I have no report I just want to apologize being I'm a little I'm a little sick under the weather so uh got to stay home and just chill out for a while get health and I want to wish everybody uh Happy Thanksgiving coming up thank you thank you Miss Hernandez I don't have no report but I just have a a just a greeting um like to give everybody uh a thank you for being here this evening um it's great to see parents staff that stay and put everything together for all the dedication that you guys have to show for your school I think that's uh an honor it's an honor especially uh being a ex employee that you know you worked and you you saw all
009that took place and what it took to get here and have parents here and even our students so um again I want to wish um all of you guys like my uh peers here that for uh have a Happy Thanksgiving and be safe and it is that time of the year where we're starting to get these rough voice and these little coughs and sniffles in here so be very careful uh on protecting yourselves in every way that you can um for [Music] um [Music] thank you madam president uh excuse me Madam president um I just need to let you know that they pushed the agenda up so I'm GNA have to sign off and I apologize for that uh program here at the state got pushed up about a half an hour okay no worries
010thank you okay thank you okay next we have superintendent update Madame President Isaac Community I just want to say it's a great honor to serve the Isaac School District I have a wonderful board to work with and wonderful leaders teachers fam students all of us working together to do our very best for our students so it's it really is an honor and privilege to serve and and coming to work and working with such amazing people allows to do great things so was in myself being h it's really all the great work that all of you do collectively all that we do collectively to serve this community and with that we I'm just going to share quickly a recap of things that we've done this this last month we've had um heart of Isaac we had
011an event today it was wonderfully attended I want to thank our our promotores our hoi staff for all the hard work they do in putting this together all our volunteers and nonprofit partners that come and serve our our parents as well um last week November 7th was National School psychology psychologist week and again great work that they do and helping us make sure that our students have the very best they need to be successful along with that we had National stem and steam day in November we have a wonderful program after school and before school that we offer our students and in some of our schools they our students have opportunity to experience Steam and stem throughout the day um last week we also had our annual High School fair I'm sorry I wasn't able
012to attend but I heard it was very well attended 192 families attended and we had school distri or high schools from throughout the Maricopa Valley attend and we want to make sure our students you you our students out there have opportunities to go on and and pursue the type of high school experience that you like and want for your future um and then lastly I'd like to end with we had our our staff well-being event again another event that's really um highly attend attended and and well attended um we provide this event because we really care about our our staff as well we want to make sure that they are safe and healthy and that we do everything they we can to help them live a fulfilling life Madam president that concludes my report thank
013you next we have new business information discussion and action first is Morris K UDA Middle School highlights Mr Harry clay principal of Morris K udow School Mr Clay good evening Madam president members of the governing board Dr Ventura and Isaac Community it is an honor and a privilege to be here this evening to share with you um all the exciting things that are going on here at Morris kud doall um to share a little bit about our exemplary staff and our amazing students that we have here so speaking of our amazing staff if you're a member of the mku staff if you're a class classified employee a certified employee a par professional a teacher an administrator can you please stand so we can give you a round of applause for all of your amazing work
014that you do this is my seventh year here at Morris kud doll and every year gets better and better and we have a great family of uh of teachers of Staff members of support staff um we have very low turnover rate many of our teachers have been here for 15 16 17 years um it's because they love the Isaac School District they love the children that they work with they love the community and and hopefully I play a little bit in that I don't know but uh we currently have 32 um certified teachers 25 classified staff and 566 exemplary students attending our school each and every day at this moment I'd like to um just acknowledge to everybody here in the room um that this past year the Arizona Department of Education recognized Morris K
015Udall as a bated school so that is quite the accomplishment we're very proud of that and soon we will be displaying our Banner out front for the whole Community to see so they know about the amazing things that happen within this building each and every day our mission the mission of Morris kall is we will Empower all students to be successfully prepared for high school and Beyond by providing our students with a rigorous safe and Technology enriched experiences each and every day and our vision is igniting Innovation within teaching and learning so we're going to dig in a little bit to the aasa scores um you can see here in the bar graph it's broken up by sixth seventh and eth grade the green bars are moris kud doll the yellow bars are the state
016average so this is based off of our proficiency rates so you can see in sixth grade we're at 15% proficiency seventh grade 15% and e8th grade 18% proficiency as we take a look at our math proficiency data you can see again the green bar is mku the yellow bar is the state average we're at 11% in sixth grade 4% 7eventh and 9% in eighth grade where we really earn our letter grade or what we're able to do is we can't control where students at when they come here so if they're at a third fourth fifth grade level when they get here we can't control that but we can sure control how much they learn once they step foot into the building and we earned RB because of our acceleration and Readiness and because the amount
017of growth that we show here at the school every day so if you look at that first bar it shows beginning of the year our reading for the fall we had 9% of our students schoolwide at or above grade level by the end of the year we doubled that we are at 18% at or above grade level by the end of the year so more than doubled our reading and then we're really impressed with our math scores at the beginning of the year we're at 6% we finished strong um over three times what we started at 18% at or above grade level so on the state um assessment how we were able to get our B we maximize the total number of points in all but two categories so our subgroup populations our special education
018our elll kiddos um our acceleration Readiness our advanced math students all exceeded um the maximum number of points our overall growth we got 50 out of 50 points but we did leave some points behind in the proficiency category so what are we doing to address that well we started out this past year we were looking at data um Mr Dennis Lon and myself and we noticed that between fifth and sixth grade we were losing some students to Charter Schools to the math and science academy and we know that our programs here are way better than any other programs so we set forth to advertise and Market our school we went to every single one of the elementary schools during their coffee with the principal and we put on a a performance of our programs of
019our uh class offerings of our before and after school programming and we were able to get about 45 kids on open variances to come to our school School for sixth grade many of those students are at or above grade level we were able to create two sections of sixth grade language arts honors servicing over 55 students we also have a seventh grade honors and eighth grade honors class and something I'm really excited about is our sixth grade math we have two sections of pre-algebra so about 54 kids in those classes so next year they'll take algebra and get high school credit and then in e8th grade they'll take geometry and get high school credit so they will leave Morris kud doll with two years worth of high school math credit so then absolutely so then
020when they go on to high school they'll most likely be able to take dual enrollment and get college credits when they leave high school so we're really excited about that um that's something that we've been wanting to do for a while we were able to put that in place um we also were focusing on our tier 2 interventions um we have before and after school programming that we address that but we also wanted to make sure we addressed it during the school day so we have all 566 of our students are either taking part in an intervention or an enrichment during the day we looked at the data and determined if they had a greater need in math or reading and we placed them appropriately all of our intervention is taught by highly qualified teachers
021that specialize in those specific content areas we also reached out to the vendor one toone tutoring and they do a lot of push in and small group work in our English language learner classrooms finally we were able to provide Chromebooks to all of our students to take home so that they could focus at home on Intervention using our I already individualized uh learning pathway um a little look at some of our our goals for this year and our integrative action plan we're really focused on professional learning communities this year I think we are one of the only districts in in the state that I know of where we have cross-site plc's so we have teachers from all three middle schools peblo IMS and mku that meet weekly on Thursdays for an hour to plan collaboratively
022to talk about student misconceptions best practices for instruction they analyze student work and they look at assessment data um and through that that's a great tool because one we're able to recruit teachers because they want to be a part of that collaboration and two we continuously grow our teachers because they're lifelong Learners and we want to make sure our students have the best teachers possible our other um focus is student goal setting we want to make sure that when our students leave here they know how to set goals and how to break it up into a small incremental incremental parts so they can monitor their progress towards reaching that goal so that they don't seem unachievable because our students could do anything that they set their minds to so we use our I ready District
023Benchmark data for the beginning of the year and then we test it again middle and end of the year um they meet with our teachers during advisory time to set goals and action steps and then monitor their progress towards reaching those goals and then lastly our big focus is on student discourse we want to make sure our students have an opportunity for their voices to be heard so our student discourse is very structured it's vocabulary focused and content specific and it is each student an opportunity to share their opinion to collaborate with each other and to learn as a whole group at this time um Miss Elizabeth Gonzalez is going to come up and briefly talk about our CTE programs here at Morris kud doll Middle School Miss Gonzalez good evening Madame President board Dr
024Ventura armor Isaac Community um I am proud to say that I am the former assistant principal here and I am also the current CTE coordinator for the district um here at Morris kud doll I want to thank Mr glay our partners our teachers who have hosted our new programs for the district here at Morris kll we get super excited about CTE that you can even hear our heart racing is there a doctor in the house hi my name is Emily and I'm a future doctor thank you for coming MK community no worries we have a diagnosis for when someone has a rapid heartbeat it is due to having a huge love for our community but if you need anything else we have an mku first aid kit for our boards welcome Madame President board Dr
025Ventura and Isaac Community I am Miss Marta and I a future teacher we want to thank all of our partners who support our program from being kind for from U of A Zone 7 band doctors the sheriff department and the flight program for supporting our future doctors future social workers future teachers and culinary who are our future chefs we give you we have a gifts for you cing stones with positive messages Yellow Jacket pumpkins that are on your table please take them home and of course the CTE chocolate because sweet future start with MK u c t e we all support being kind responsible and respectful and to demonstrate this please welcome our future teachers who created the anti bullying step dance don't be shy right here shy hello and and welcome Madame President border
026members and our super attendent Dr Ventura and I am Andrew one of Morris K's udah city of Pho sustainability officers we want to thank our city of Phoenix sustainability facilities for being here and we uh we to all our partners to uh here this evening at this time we'd like all our partners to stand up and to be recognized hello my name is Iceland oano and I am also a sustain sustainability officer because our community is important to us we also advocate for neighborhood safety please consider joining us for any upcoming neighborhood watch meetings check our online events calendar for dates and times hello my name is Carla Lopez and I'm a future Chef please enjoy H that we made in the mku Aon last year we planted H bushes in a garden and we
027look and we're looking forward to working with U of AA to grow more fruits and vegetables for S Mayo AUA Festa please enjoy your cookies made by our culinary class and served by our robot mascot Buzzy who was made by our future robotic engineering club [Music] thank you sweetie thank you thank you so much see robot so let's take a moment I know how hard and and and stressful it is to be up in front of a large group group of people and we just had many of our students come up that haven't even been up public speaking before and they were amazing they used robotics to bring cookies and treats for our board and our our district office staff they talked about sustainability they talked about future teachers future doctors let's give all of
028them a round of applause for their courage and bravery and our culinary arts department actually baked all those cookies in there they are just as delicious as they are beautiful so I really hope that you all enjoy those take them home to your family and and there's some mku logos in there for them too so little self-promotion all right next we're going to talk a little bit about our 21st century before and after school programming um we offer both before school after school enrichment and tutoring we have numerous clubs here um you've already kind of seen our culinary club we have our robotic club we have a stem Club Basketball Club baseball club um video game club board game club and then we also have tutoring available in both language arts science and um mathematics
029um you can see some of the pictures that are culinary arts experts you can kind of see some of the technology that we utilize in small groups for our before and after school program at this time I'd like to call up Carla Lopez Lara and she's going to talk a little bit about our 21st century programs Carla so we're just going to close with a little bit more about our 21st century so we offer 21st century program every morning before school from 6: to uh 8 o'clock and then we have start our normal day we currently have 132 out of 566 of our students taking part in either before school or after school programming so that is incredible and it just shows a little bit of the commitment and dedication that our staff and our
030students have here at mku speaking of family and Community engagement these are just some of the pictures of the opportunities we provide for parents and staff to be involved in the school if you look in the top leftand corner of the screen there that is our Garden to table um parent group it was a six- week course where we talked about gardening and we actually took ingredients from the garden after the sixe class cooked them and shared recipes and shared uh Entre with each other a uh U OFA was there to help support it and provide us with the U the financing and the materials so we want to thank our partnership with them in the top right hand corner you can see one of our teachers seventh grade SEI teacher Daniel Casada every Monday
031he offers English classes for our parents and our enrollment has steadily increased every week that he's offered that class um on the bottom the second picture from the left that's from our coffee with the principal we routinely have between 35 and 40 parents that join us every month for our coffee with the principal it's a great opportunity to hear about things going on around the campus to see how our students are performing in achievement and with behavior and to ask any questions or bring forth any concerns they have we also created our uh neighborhood block watch you can see the third picture from the left that's officer Bobby Valdez he works with our community to create a block watch because we want our families and Community to feel safe so we share with them ways
032that they can report incidents within the neighborhood how they can protect themselves and their neighbors and then finally you can see our adult Folklorico classes led by Miss Blanca Garcia and we're actually going to see a little performance from them later on in the presentation here are some more examples of how we use technology and the new furniture that we were able to acquire through our eser funds each and every day in the classroom so you can see in in the top left students in our language arts classrooms are using their draw erase uh desks to use thinking maps to plan out their writing you can see where we have our Hands-On science kits and touchscreen televisions to learn about the body's digestive system and to do hypothesis Hands-On experiments and then record their findings
033we can also see the Chromebooks being utilized in our classroom and in the bottom right hand corner you can see one of our sixth grade math classrooms Miss foral Loa where students are using their desks in their groups or their pods and they're showing multiple ways or strategy on how to solve the same problem group members then each share how they solved so students have a better understanding conceptually of how to solve the problem in multiple ways each month we have our site Council meetings you can see from the uh graphic we have a number of teachers parents classified Community um Outreach and myself that sit in this provides our parents and Community an opportunity to be included in the decision-making and play an active role here at Morris kud doll middle student celebrations because
034our students deserve it right we have amazing students here so these are just some of the ways that we celebrate them we have numerous dances fall festivals Trunk or Treat we have our student of the month with pizza Pepsi and ice cream our teachers attend um the second picture on the bottom from the left that is from our Hive um we have foosball air hockey Xbox PlayStation numerous opportunities they can earn to go in and um engage in collaboration and hang out with their friends and socialize um the next picture the third from the left that's one of our students that used his positive behavior points to purchase a football and then you can see we have numerous games and other fun activities that we do each and every day in the hive I mention
035the student holding the football um we have a student store it's actually right over there with the uh metal door every Friday our students after lunch are able to purchase items from the store using their positive behavior intervention points um last year we talked a little bit about our PBIS app but each student has an ID here with a QR code our teachers in class scan it with their cell phones or with an iPad and they award points for when students are being safe responsible and respectful those points accumulate they even transfer from year to year so if you're a sixth grader and you don't use them all you can carry them over to seventh grade and they can be used to pre uh purchase all kinds of fun activities and um materials they can
036use it to pay entrance into a dance they can use it to buy a dress down ticket they can use it to enter our Hive to play video games or they can use it in our student store here is an example of just some of the items that we offer our students in the student store anything from um mku swag shirts jackets we have footballs soccer balls uh PS4 controllers PS4 stations um and then school supplies so our students love this and we offer it to them each and every Friday next up I want to recognize some of our exemplary teachers that we have here this next individual has been at mku for six years so she's our sixth grade SEI teacher and let me tell you that is one of the hardest positions that
037you can fill at any Middle School um it's a challenging job um class sizes are large and Miss appario comes in each and every day ready to teach she's the true definition of um of servant leadership um she's caring she's compassionate she puts the needs of the students before her own needs each and every day she is on our diversity equity and inclusion and belongingness uh committee she was also on curriculum mapping um she also is piloting or Cam pens which will be using this year in January and these Oram pens we use with our language Learners it could translate any piece of text handwritten or typed into over a 100 different languages so it's a tool that we're going to Pilot in that classroom to see how it helps our uh bilingual emergent Learners
038so at this time if Miss Sandra apparicio would please come up to receive her award good evening I am tful to receive this award and I'm very humble thank you very much I would like to thank my family for their support at home cooking dinner so when I get home dinner's ready and thank you so much and uh for my colleagues thank you for making this uh School a a family this is my second family this is my second home and Mr Glade thank you for giving me an opportunity to keep on coming back and keep on working with my seci students which I love very much they're my motivation to keep on coming and keep on progressing and helping them to thrive and be successful not just in the classroom but beyond the classroom
039too so thank you very much and again this is for not just for me but everybody M MK thank you get me all next up I would like to recognize one of our sixth grade math teachers uh Miss Rosalinda foral Loa is the true definition of a lifelong learner she works very closely with our site based academic coach our district strategists um she's constantly trying new um and creative ways to increase student engagement in her classroom the picture of the desks with the dry erasers that was her classroom she's really focused on conceptual understanding and development and visual models because she knows that that's how our students learn best um and it's not happen stance that as she started making that shift and really focusing on differentiation in her classroom that this past year her
040sixth grade math scores have been the highest in the entire Isaac School District so miss Rosalinda Formosa would you please come down and accept your award I'm nervous actually but thank you so much for this recognition Mr glay and mku family um I would really appreciate this award and I really want to um give thanks to the whole ISAC District because this is my like four fourth year of teaching but I received this award of appreciation and I will continue to be more productive and have a growth mindset for all my students to share all my new learnings and strategies that I have from the PLC thank you so much for this recognition again next up we would like to recognize a classified staff member um this individual is very passionate about what we do
041here she's very passionate about our uh emergent bilingual program because her child went through the bilingual program here at moris kud doll um Miss Rios Miranda is organized professional prompt always going above and beyond she's the the main reason why mku was able to pass the ad audit and not only that but she was um sent to other elementary schools within our district to ensure that all their paperwork was in order that their systems were in place that their rosters were correct it was a big Endeavor and she not only helped this school but many other of the elementary schools in this District turn it around and ensure that our district um looked amazing to the state so we'd like to recognize Miss Rios Miranda at this time please come down Yasmin and accept your
042award all I have to say is thank you and let's continue on on working as a team as we have been and the last classified member I'd like to recognize you know her well she was busy working T night preparing an amazing meal for us for um for our students each and every single day earlier in the year when we were looking at ways to maximize instructional time and we have the half day Thursdays we came up with the idea of doing a grab and go lunch so that way our periods could be 40 minutes long instead of 30 minutes because we know we want to maximize our instructional time and when students are here um focus on learning so she gladly changed the whole layout of the cafeteria and how they do things to
043provide every Thursday our students come in they get a healthy nutritious sack lunch desserts crustable cheese sticks milk and they get to take it home and eat it and they don't miss out on any of their instruction our algebra students our bused over to Pua Doo for Mr cat needs to teach um they need a healthy breakfast they need to eat because if they don't have a full stomach they're not going to be able to pay attention no problem Mr glay she put together an amazing breakfast each and every day for the kids to get they come in here they grab it they get on the bus they head over their bellies are full and their minds are full so um she's amazing with that she provides us with coffee with the principal with all
044the snacks the cookies she decorates our Lounge she provided a a buffet style lunch for our teachers yesterday um I don't have enough kind words to say about Miss Moreno she's awesome we're glad to have her here at mku so at this time if uh Rosa Moreno if you'll please come up to accept your award fore I think after meeting those four individuals and hearing them you know why we're such an amazing school and why we're so lucky to have them our kids are amazing and they have incredible people supervising them and teaching them and feeding them and supporting them every day in their classroom so I want to thank all of our staff it takes an entire School Community you guys are amazing you're the best group of Educators professionals I've ever worked with
045um here's hoping for many more years together as a Isaac family um at this time we're going to go with our student performances we have our band director Mr Austin mun they're going to play two songs for you festive Fanfare and Hound of the Baskerville so let's give a warm round Round of Applause for Mr Austin mun Mor graas at this time will our Isaac governing board and Dr ventur please return to their seats up at the front thank you so much to our parents thank you so much to our students let's give all of our performers a loud Round of Applause lastly as uh board president um Miss HZ mentioned our superintendent recently received an award um as outstanding superintendent from the a allas foundation um it's not happen stance that so many of
046our schools are rated a b or above it's under his guidance and Leadership that we're following his lead and learning and ensuring that our students get a a great education every day in class and that our teachers are supported and that they have the professional development they need to continue to grow in their field so at this time Mr Luis chidas would you please come up to the podium to present Dr Ventura with an award good evening ladies and gentlemen it's my honor to present to you Dr Ventura this gift on behalf of Dr Mr glay Dr uh dramz and all the uh the staff and mku family wonderful people it's my privilege to present to you this truly honored everyone thank you so much so Mr chidas when you retire from teaching we know
047that you have another career that you're going to be jumping into with those with those talents thank you so much thank you Dr ventor for your leadership and your guidance and support over the last seven years that concludes our presentation at this time we'll open it up for any questions from the board thank you does the board have any comments Mr Hernandez yeah I just have a comments I just want to continue to praise the good work you're doing keep it up um all of you to thank you I just want to say wow and um it's amazing um like they say I I always say this comment wow wow it's it thank you very much for wonderful presentation the kids you're amazing um all of you I mean it's as you can see I
048wish we could just have full of presentations and not going into business because I mean this is fun and I love it and I I love seeing the parents the staff um like they mentioned earlier one of your uh persons that one of the teachers that said it's a team I love hearing that this is what makes Isaac a team and it's team effort and I commend you and I know that um you know the letter great it's amazing and thank you for your leadership um you have done an amazing job as a principal and I see the way that you were talking I I the way that you were talking about your staff and I even told Dr V he doesn't even have a script so that tells me a lot yes that tells
049me a lot you know your staff you know your your people and and and thank you very much for being a leader for I mean I just it's it amazes me so thank you very much and you guys are wonderful and thank you again students for choosing Isaac thank you okay like now we have to go to business but thank you very much now we have um a and F School letter grade designation Dr ly Mesa LMA assistance yes all done so at this time we're going to go into business if you guys I'm going to do like a little two minute if you guys have to go thank you let them we what's that oh my tattoo oh it's cool like it a lot of work I get I get to just chill out
050on Thanksgiving I told perfect because yeah yeah I I said perfect because we're going to the this year to than take care hope you have fast recovery thank you yeah we did a good job yeah ready congratulations yeah okay I'm going to be starting in 1 minute okay can [Music] you it was I used to dance when I was okay ready ready yes ready okay at this time I'm gonna reconvene the meeting we're gonna have the AF School letter grade designation Dr Le Mesa LMA assistant superintendent and Mr Dr Dennis Lon data and system syst systems integration coordinator um Mr Dennis or Miss Lily good evening Madame President members of the board Dr Ventura Isaac Community I'm Lily mesala and I'm the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction I'm joining virtually due to a previously
051scheduled work commitment I so wish I could have been there to see those amazing presentations today uh but for business today uh in and in this presentation I am a accompanied by Dr Dennis lton our data and systems coordinator our presentation today will focus on the recently published school and District letter grades and we will provide an overview of how letter grades are assigned and our action steps to continue to collectively advance and sustain those efforts by state and federal law all schools in Arizona are required to be be scored using a letter grade of a through F these letter grades which are published annually aim to indicate the level of performance of each School based on four areas growth proficiency English learner proficiency and growth and acceleration Readiness and all of those four components
052together weigh a total of 100% growth in this formula is the biggest piece of the p and accounts for 50% of the school that are grade uh growth is measured by the increase in student proficiency from one Academic Year to the next in math and English language arts by the same group of students this growth in proficiency is measured by student scores on the Arizona academic standards assessment or um aasa which is our state assessment proficiency is another factoring the letter grade weighing 30% proficiency measures how students in third grade and above have mastered the grade level standards proficiencies is also measured using the state assessment or aasa in both math and English language arts accounting for 10% of that letter grade is the growth and proficiency of English learner students and finally the fourth
053component which is acceleration Readiness factors account for the last 10% of the letter grade acceleration Readiness includes measurements in five areas the targeted performance of students in third grade and eighth grade access to inclusive education for students with an individualized education plan or IEP and performance of subgroups and data on chronic absentismo okay good evening I'm Dennis Lon Data Systems integration coordinator and I'll it is my happy duty to be here tonight to report on how our schools have been performing on the a2f rubric um with the categories that uh Dr Lily just described so on the screen you can see on the left that's the model that the the sections that come up to the 100% of the letter grade over on the right hand side that's the data for one of our sites
054so if you look at the graph on the right you can see we got all 50 points for growth we get all 10 points for E proficiency and acceleration but when you look at the blue section which is worth 30% um this site received 14% so the the pale blue section that's that's taken out a little bit that's the that's the 16% that we didn't get so again for this site to improve next year the the area that we really need to focus on is to to increase uh reading and math proficiency okay this is the same data for the whole District but it's in a bargraph format you can see on the left hand column that's the points possible so as you can notice it will add up to 104 because on top of
055the 100 points the state also gives an opportunity to get four bonus points okay so looking across at the different sites you can see that in the green section of the growth we're getting almost in all cases we're getting the 50 points or really close to the 50 points and also in the orange section on top which is the acceleration Readiness we're getting all 10 points or in most cases so the area that we really need to focus on across the whole district is the blue there which is again the proficiency so we have 30 30% of the model is based on the proficiency but our sites we only received between eight and 14% so so that's a growth area and really for Isaac District to improve next year um on our letter grades across
056the board we need to be increasing reading and math proficiency this is the same data is just showing the total points earned by each site again the possible is 104 we had two sites that met the cut off for an a which is about 80 84 points two sites exceeded that we had six sites exceed the cut off to get a b-grade including as um Mr glay has been doing spoilers all evening including all three of our middle schools they all got B grades this year and um and then the remaining three schools got got got CG grades but you can see looking at the graph that even the schools that got a cade they were really close to the line really close to that cut off to get a B this graph is showing
057just a comparison of where we are now compared to where we were in 2019 2019 was the last year we got a through F letter grades before the pandemic so in 2019 we had three B schools three C schools three D schools and one F School and um you can see a dramatic difference to where we are uh in 2023 compared to 2019 and uh that's a testament to all of the hard work that's been happening at all of the school sites and our Collective effort and it's showing us that uh the areas that we're focusing on are are having an impact this year to for the first time the State of Arizona is awarding letter grades to school districts and so what they do is they take all of the points that each School
058uh receives and then they take an average so it's just like a GPA and a is worth a four B is worth a a three and so Isaac School District we got 2.9 which runs out to three so Isaac school district is uh or letter grade is a b okay so I'm going to turn it over to Dr Lily to talk about our efforts to to keep the work going forward thank you Dr Lon so those uh letter grades uh that we received this year which we just reviewed are one uh area of a big celebration but it's also the outcomes of that Collective focus on the right work by Educators by site leaders and by District leaders it is a representation of an increased engagement in continuous Improvement as well the timeline that you
059see here outlines a few of those critical areas for each of the post-pandemic years that build on our instructional program to ensure that all of our students are receiving exceptional teaching and learning every day it is also important for me to knowe that uh Student Learning Happens at schools and site leaders and Educators have played and continue to play a critical role in those areas related to the implementation of a cohesive and Equitable in instructional program that addresses the needs of all students in addition each of these areas in our instructional program Builds on one another to strengthen our accelerated learning strategy therefore in order to advance or sustain those gains that we have made in our letter grades and the consequent letter grades that we will receive Educators and site and District leaders must
060stay committed and focused on this work on this right work and this very same strategy as we now can see that it is yielding the results and the increased levels of student learning that we are as Educators all entrusted to provide to our students so when it comes to letter grades in order to advance or sustain the current letter grades as Dr lton pointed out we must increase the proficiency levels for both English language arts as well as math as measured by the state assessments proficiency is achieved when students demonstrate Mastery of the grade level standards and we want our students to demonstrate Mastery of grade level standards not just in English language arts and math just because those are the ones that are counting towards the letter grade but for all other subject areas
061as well because ultimately we are preparing students for high school and Beyond so in order to Pro provide those opportunities for our students to demonstrate Mastery of the grade level standards we have a number of structures in place to provide that access and the data to track the extent to which students are accessing and demonstrating the learning this data also shows leaders how to make informed decisions as they lead this work at their sites with their teachers and students and achieve the goals they have set out to achieve the those inst structures the structures include the prioritized grade level standards outlined in The Curriculum maps which when paired with the standards aligned curriculum resources for teachers to use when planning their units of study and lessons and building the clarity that is needed to be
062developed prior to students entering the classrooms then students can then experience the learning that leads to mastering of the GR grade level standards in turn this um level of effective plan lessons and the clarity of learning that is expected for students during each of those lessons ensures that students are constantly exposed to learning that requires them to carry the cognitive load which is one of our anchors and which means that students are engaging in higher order and complex thinking problem solving and using academic and academic discourse course another one of our instructional anchors to make their learning and their thinking visible and for this we use the ISD walkthrough and related goals to gauge the extent to which students are having access to grade level standards and the learning experiences that will allow them to
063successfully demonstrate Mastery of the standards throughout the year we also track progress to towards a grade level proficiency using the common summative assessments given at the end of the unit of study and also the I ready benchmarks given three times a year and as we have shared in previous meetings we have set goals for each of these assessment measures and now that the middle of the Year assessment is around the corner I do look forward to providing you with a in a future meeting of course with an update on how sites in the district are doing towards those goals so in summary as we wrap up this presentation today the letter grades represent again a collective effort by our Educators our site leaders our district leaders towards attaining common goals and attaining the cohesion on
064the framework and the strategies for um curriculum and instruction and maintaining this Collective effort is an essential part of advancing and sustaining the upward Trend in results and student learning that we are seeing thank you and at this time I am happy to answer any questions you may have does the board have any questions I just have a a a a question when are we going to be um testing again I don't know if whoever wants to answer we will be doing our midyear Benchmark starting on December 4th this year that'll be our next assessment coming up okay and then um but when do we do the State Testing State Testing will be coming up in April in April and so we're focusing right now on on I I know pretty much you know we
065want to keep growing and um we're focusing you said we're looking at the data and we're helping those students and those schools to get to the next level correct yes Madam president well I just want to congratulate you know every school um I like I mentioned in the past I believe that we have made tremendous Improvement um thank you to all you know the administrators the principles the teachers um it it's a lot of work you know thank you very much for what you do I mean I commend you I I could never do it but I have seen a lot of growth and I know that we have many different programs every Thursday everything that we're doing like uh the learning communities that we have so thank you very much the only thing that
066that I would ask um I did not understand quite of the slides they're very blurry I don't know if you could get a a copy to us a hard copy with so I could kind of definitely Madam president we'll get you that yeah okay thank you thank you Dr Lily thank you okay next um we're going to move on parent engagement family Leadership Institute Marcel Lopez director of family and Community program information Miss Lopez Madame President governing board members Dr Ventura staff um I'm excited to share with you all about the family Leadership Institute in the celebration in partnership with na oh it's me I'm the clicker um let me share with you a little bit about fli family Leadership Institute is a three-week virtual Workshop that was offered for iist families in a partnership
067with the National Association of bilingual education also known as na the goal of the family Leadership Institute or known as fli is to engage families with students in the Elementary grades and ways that they can learn how to communicate better with their children their school in the community families attend a virtual session and we made that a little bit different by providing that in the parent education classroom with parent education parent Educators as co- facilitators I'm excited to share with you that the goal originally was to have a 100 parents within our district as we were going um with our other cohorts which were New York and Chicago so the goal was that ISD could represent 100 families we had 128 registered families and 98% of them completed the program and you can see our
068breakdown here we were very intentional and how we recruited our families so first we thought of our jumpstart families we fed at every parent teacher conference opportunity we spoke to new parents and we ultimately did phone cold phone calls to recruit families that perhaps we would not see typically here was the family commitment as I shared with you this was a 3-week program it took place Tuesdays and Thursdays for an hour and a half every day families needed to attend five of the six sessions to be considered a graduate and only two families decided to attend um the fli virtually in the comfort of their home um parent Educators joined the team and joined as support and co- facilitators and that means our consuello who was leading and the director of fli would provide breakout
069activities for the um facilitators the parent Educators to lead those activities within the classroom and our families how did ISD make a difference as I shared with you our cohort was also with Chicago in New York and by far our partners at fli were impressed by our families and their commitment ISD had the largest cohort and representation of fli and parent education team was the key in recruitment retention and a sense of belonging and building Community with our parents although B virtual breakout activities were included which made the sessions very interactive it also brought in new parents that we typically would have not seen through um other sessions and some topics that were address where value of Education love language vision boards and setting goals for our future I in summary I want to share
070with you that the district we are celebrating a graduation for our fli families um November 30th at 4:30 is our ceremony and you all should be receiving an invite pretty soon and to eliminate ensure that we are um removing any barriers will also provide transportation to allow families to make their graduation um we have taken and RSVP all of them are very excited to be able to celebrate this accomplishment and that is my portion have any questions I'm I'm in for the celebration I was looking at my calendar I'm available so I'll be there 4:30 we would love to see you um I I think it's great um my question is so how how did the families feel about it yeah I think um we received our feedback from them every every parent was excited
071and thrilled in true transparency the first session was a little hard our families are not they don't do very well on a virtual setting but I love that fli was willing to include us in a debrief and really optimize the opportunity to have a parent educator there so that's what made the difference um to allow that that um parent educator did the breakout session so she would say okay five minutes work on those activities I would say that it's been a sense of belonging that families stayed after the hour and a half to continue the dialogue they will be creating vision boards in January so this cohort has remained steady um together after the sessions and when is the next um session um I will have to get back to you because I know we
072are in a cohort one in in collaboration with NAB I'm so unsure who will they service in the spring but I can definitely look it to that well thank you well real quick um I just want to thank you personally Ally Miss Lopez because you know by being at at a different places and talking about the heart of Isaac um and I'm GNA have somebody come and look at the heart of Isaac because they're amazed of everything that we do here with the heart of Isaac how we help our families the program and I truly want to thank you for your leadership and and for making all these possible and you know um that's why I I want to know all the Partnerships that we have because I think it's amazing of of when I
073go and I'm oh we already work with Isaac oh really okay I mean that's great but you know it it's it amazes me so thank you very much for your for your work that you do with us thank you for your trust Madame President I have a comment as well please um I also want to thank you being a an next parent educator I still have my ties out there with lots of my parents and they come back to me and I hear a lot of good things that you're doing and a lot of positive things that are happening under your umbrella so I want you to know that I'm very happy to see that because you know um it's very important to have a positive leader and a person who is really trying to
074um feed into what the community needs and wants and it's just an overall positive attitude out there and I'm I'm happy to hear that I'm very happy so I'm I'm grateful that you're you're there thank you so much it's juliean honor appreciate it thank you okay so our last presentation or information Isaac cares initiative of student well-being Mr dric Martinez intern director of student services information good afternoon Madame President uh Dr vuda District officials uh site administrators and community members um I would love to be there and present um I'm currently on a prior scheduled professional test uh but uh at this time I would like to present the Isaac scares uh initiatives for student well-being so if we can go to the next slide please uh so at this time I would like to
075bring Miss Amy Grant uh she's our district prevention coordinator and she's been streamlining our collaboration and communication with Maricopa County Adolescence Health Program uh in regards to the initiative at hand and so um she's going to be um looking into the uh presentation alongside with our representative from maroba County thank you Mr Martinez um good evening everybody Madame President distinguished governing board members and Dr ventur um thank you for having us tonight um when I started here in July um one person I got to meet was um Estella know and um we got to collaborate about about um student social emotional learning and um the direction that the district was headed um I got to be a part of a parent Focus Group in July um I was really really interested to hear what the
076parents felt and um we had representatives from all middle schools there a parent educator there um we had uh a lot of great conversation about what parents were looking for in schools um we started talking about the difficulties that they were having competing with things like social media um friends who maybe were misguided in different ways uh we talked about um student well-being and um relationships and um coping skills uh mindfulness all kinds of things and one thing that was very clear from the meeting with the parents was they are struggling they're struggling talking to their children about sex education and they are asking for our schools to help them they are looking for resources they are looking for ways to bring up these topics so that children are not misguided by social media and
077what is presented to them on their cell phones um that that they're getting the facts and that they understand um their choices and their bodies um so it it was a compelling um meeting um it definitely went a different direction than I thought um but but when you hear parents and you think about being truly dedicated to Student Success part of that is is the health of a child too social emotional and also healthy bodies so um with that looking into Partnerships and Community Support um teachers can't be alone on this principles can't be alone in this um we were looking for um options to bring forth tonight um so do want to share that um I I have included the district policy on sex education as well as legal references for you um and
078then to find the right partnership meant to look in places that are our kids could connect with people that our kids could trust and that we would trust to talk to our children and have meetings with our parents so that when they go home they can have conversations at home as well there are a lot of misconceptions um there are a lot of taboos don't talk about this um so this is a way that parents are looking for to start having conversations um sometimes just the start of it um can lead and open up conversations at home so with that I would like to present to you um two of our partners from Maricopa County adolescent Health Jackie and Alfredo thank you so thank you so much um good evening um thank you so much
079for having us here today um my name like Amy said my name is Jackie Paloma England I am the senior youth Health educator for um the teen pregnancy prevention program but also known as the Adolescent health program um we are as mentioned we are from Maricopa County Department of public health and I have my colleague here Alfredo bivia hello everyone thank you all for having us uh again my name is Alfredo and uh yeah so we're GNA get started um so I feel really honored to be here with you all as I am actually past alumni from Isaac of Isaac School District I actually attended Joseph zto elementary school from the fall of 1999 so I'm aging myself a little um and I was there I was there till fall of 20 4 so up
080on the screen you'll see some of my pictures um especially the kindergarten you I graduated from Miss Valencia's class in kindergarten and then uh from there um I actually ended up you know the following year with a first grade with Miss Hernandez and I uh ended up breaking my arm that year but I was still happy to be at Isaac you I still came back um in second grade in Mr aro's class I uh was fortunate to experience a new classroom at that time a new building was built um between um the playground and the library so I got to experience Something Beautiful there um uh in third grade I had one of the most caring teachers that I still uh think up fly to this day Miss Easley who showed us a trick to
081memorize our um a trick to be able to multiply by our nines that I still can be remembered to this day and again I have so many wonderful memories there at um at at zto um even my M my mom attended some of the um was it computer literacy classes ESL classes so we were very involved in my time there um and again I was also really fortunate to participate in after school activities and different summer programs that were offered and so these programs that I participated also sparked my love for knowledge and encouraged me to connect with my community and others and at my school so uh prior to my role that my current role at Maricopa County Department of Public Health I was a prevention specialist at teros Health while there I had
082the privilege of working with the school counselors and teachers such as um teachers at Moya elementary ptco elementary Ando Sol um there I was delivering a substance use prevention program the life skills B the B the botman life schools curriculum and um the reason I'm bringing this up is because I've always wanted to give back to the community grew up in right and help our youth grow with the necess necessary skills and information needed to avoid risky behaviors so that is why I'm here today as well in my current role through evidencebased curricula that has been approved by the Arizona Department of Health Services we are able to help youth by providing medically accurate information and the necessary skills needed to avoid those risky behaviors that may cause unplanned pregnancies or the transmission of sexually
083transmitted infections uh we want our youth to be healthy we want them to achieve their life goals um which can include you know promoting from middle school graduating high school graduating college and um you know being successful in whatever path they choose to follow um so our youth will learn about different relationships goal setting problem solving skills decision-making skills communication skills as well and on top of that emotion management so um we offer three different youth curricula uh we have making a difference the teen outreach program and then we have a condensed version of the Teen outreach program that we are calling the Arizona pilot because it is specific to Arizona so I'll go over a little bit um about each curriculum or all Alfredo go over making a difference here yeah so uh making
084a difference is one of our evidence-based programs and it's a very cool program it consists of eight modules each module is about 60 Minutes uh and so with this module it's very medical heavy so there's going to be a lot of information on SDs HIV as well as problem solving models so teaching the youth how to say no in pressure situations if they're getting pressured and also how to help somebody else as well if they're getting pressured as well uh so again this one is geared towards Middle School there's a lot of scenarios along with the the problem solving skill so they they get Hands-On practice on how to get away from a situation uh and again with with the role playing activities as well again it's it's just putting everything together that they've learned
085and putting it into practice as well so I also wanted to talk a little bit about the teen outreach program um so there is the full version of the Teen outreach program so that is about 38 lessons long and that cons it's a 9-month program um so what's different about this curriculum is that it offers um it is a youth a positive youth development program as well but when we're looking at the full curriculum we're looking at um sexual health information as well so there are certain topics that would NE be necessary to cover as our program is um an absence plus program so we would cover absence we would talk about um STI or sexually transmitted infections we would talk about um using protection and how to take care of ourselves um so there
086are specific lessons that would be covered and then um on top of that because it is a 9month long program there is a minimum of 20 hours of community service that would be part of that where the youth would decide as a group what they're passionate about what they want to be involved in so for example let's say they are passionate about animals and so we would decide as a group um let's go ahead and build you know dog toys or create treats and donate to our local shelter so we would find different things that we can do as part of community service um on top of that so that is the full program but then we do have the condensed version that I have up on the screen um so the condensed version is
087it consists of 12 lessons um so these 12 lessons will cover body image talking about social media learning um to develop empathy exploring our different emotions um if we've you know um been triggered how do we calm down to be able to self-regulate correct and so we also have lessons on um learning to accept failure and learning from that so we look at famous people where we learn about Oprah Winfree and her experience and we try to persevere um so with these lessons the top pilot the Arizona pilot project that one will exclude Sexual Health but it is again focusing that positive uh Youth Development that social emotional development and so since it is a conun version it is a minimum of 10 hours of community service so again as a group we would decide
088how do we give back to to our community and so that was a little bit about our youth program but we also offer parent workshops um so we offer these parent workshops in Spanish and English for any parent so typically we try to um provide this for parents between the a who have youth between the ages of 11 to 19 but honestly we encourage any parent to come and attend um just because they can start having discussions early on as you know talking about consent is something that's you know so crucial and so we really encourage parents to come and uh participate and learn early on on how to have these discussions because it is so crucial and we want to keep those um channels of communication open between their child and their families um
089so these these workshops are about two hours long um we've had great feedback from whenever we host these workshops and so that's a little bit about what we offer um no okay but that that that's a little bit about our program that we have so um if you have any questions I will turn it over to you do you have any questions Mr um I do have a couple of questions um you talked about middle school students um who picks middle school students or I mean is it everybody you said in in general so um to follow State Statute it is an optin program so we would um support our families um they would have to opt in for their child to be part of the program so how are we promoting it though for
090the parents to know that we have this well we we don't have it yet yet okay um so whichever we're going to be displaying all three for you as well as digitally and for parents and it would be it will be open um for anyone to go and View and give feedback um and then whatever the governing board decides um we will work to make that happen but per the state statute it is an opt-in program um for sex education in in the state of Arizona and if if whenever we start when like the sessions are during school after school sure so um the county is currently doing both types and in different ways um some schools have opted to use programs after school and some have opted during the school day so for instance
091in our Middle School it could be during advisory period and then kids who have opted in would have that for advisory that day kids who have not opted in would have their typical advisory hour so when do we I mean you said we haven't started yet so I'm kind of kind of lost a little bit so then how are we going to get it started I mean what's the process sure so our process is like any curriculum adoption where we would keep it open for the the number of days that we need to um for governing board review and then we would bring it forth um based on the recommendations um for you to to vote on okay I guess we'll be looking forward for more information but thank you and um Jackie I'm glad
092that you're coming back and giving back to the community so let's give her a round of applause I think it's great thank you so much I think it's always great to have students coming back and you know when they say oh I'm Al an Alum night I'm like oh great I'm old because I probably shook your head in fifth grade but that's great thank you for for always coming back and you know um giving back to the community to our kids um other than that I don't have any further questions thank you okay we move on are you still there Mr Santa Cruz I'm still here okay almost done okay next up is approval of the whole consent agenda so move is there a second second call for the vote governing board member Mr Rudy
093Santa Cruz may I please have your verbal vote I motion carries um do we have Miss Pera any call to the public Madame President at this time we do not have any request to address the governing board thank you our enrollment is 4,880 our calendar is November 15 education support Professional Day November 17th substitute Educators Day November 22nd to the 20 24th Thanksgiving break November 24th National Native American Heritage Day November 28th parent advisory council meeting at 3348 West McDow 5: to 6:30 uh December 25th 2023 through January 5th winter break no school and our next governing board meeting will be held Thursday December 14th at ala E Butler Elementary School at 3848 with Roosevelt and if I don't hear any objections meeting adjourned thank you