001Hi, this is Dr. Jeff Smith, superintendent of the Balsz School District, and here are my comments for this month. We had a great week celebrating our teachers at all schools for teacher appreciation week. All of our schools had a wonderful healthy breakfast and the district office administrators were able to join all of our staffs we enjoy this opportunity to let our wonderful teachers know how much we appreciate them. So thank you to all of our teachers for teacher appreciation week. Our new teachers met for the final time in the last week or so under the excellent leadership of Ms. Daniela Robles. Our new teachers have regularly met this year to learn and share their experiences in order to help them feel comfortable and effective in their role as a Balsz educator, so congratulations to our
002new teachers and we welcome you back for a second year next year. We were very pleased to recognize several of our retirees from the teaching profession here in the Balsz School District recently at our board meeting.Mrs. Lacina Mrs. Gabriel, and Mr. Casso were all recognized for their efforts and their contributions to the Balsz School District and so we very much appreciate their service to our district and wish them the best in their retirement. and I'd like to thank Mr. Aguilar for suggesting this special recognition at our board meeting. The 2019 United States Department of Agriculture of Champions of breakfast awards were awarded recently and they recognized schools across the district and across the state and across the country for breakfast programs. Arizona had three winners this year and we were one of them in the
003category implementation of an innovative school breakfast model. Balsz has elevated our breakfast in the classroom program through partnerships with national and local organizations and support from and from the entire community and we've implemented those policies that support the district's healthy eating active living initiative such as allowing students fifteen to thirty minutes for breakfast in the morning, only serving fresh fruit and vegetables, and a nutrition education during breakfast time. Congratulations to Claude Chatelain and the Sodexo food service team for this terrific recognition of our efforts to provide healthy eating and active living in an environment in our schools. I'd also like to congratulate our tech core teachers members Katherine Urbanski and Tiffany Crawford have passed level 1 Google certification educator exam. Our own Pat Lacina passed levels 1 & 2. Tech Core teachers worked through the
004Google Curriculum this year and took a three-hour test, which was optional. We're very proud of the teachers who made the extra effort in past passing this test is difficult and these teachers have proven they have the knowledge and use of Google tools effectively at a high level in the classroom. Pat Tillman middle school will be celebrating their first promotion in the new school's history on May 22nd at 5 p.m. at Camelback High School. Congratulations to all of our eighth graders and our teachers who work so hard to prepare our students for high school and and beyond in their careers. So congratulations to those eighth graders and to the Pat Tillman team for doing such a great job this year. McAlister's Deli honored one of our teachers from Brunson Lee this week for teacher appreciation. Mr.
005Huerta from Brunson-Lee received a $50 gift card in ten lunches that he shared with other staff members. So congratulations to Mr. Huerta. We had a very special visit from Representative Langdon who visited Brunson-Lee to read to second graders recently. She read two books and spoke to them about being a representative and visiting Washington DC. The students were very interested to hear about her meeting with President Obama. As I was walking out to car she exclaimed this was my best day ever as a legislator. Thank you to Ms. Powe for making this connection with Representative Langdon possible. Thank You representative Langdon for supporting our schools. We were pleased to have 45 students from Mexico visit Tillman to shadow our students. We hosted the students for lunch with our AVID kids. I'm pleased that we continue to
006support this opportunity for 200 students from both sides of the border to meet and learn from each other. We just received some very exciting news about one of our former student. Four years ago with the help of teacher Tony Flood a Balsz eighth grader Alex Santana was able to get a scholarship to Brophy College Prep High School. He has done very well there and we just learned that he has earned an Obama Fellow Scholarship to attend ASU. This is an excellent example of how well our students can perform when provided with guidance and belief in themselves. We are reaching out to Alex and we appreciate everything he's done and we wish him the best in his future at Arizona State University. Our second annual district chess tournament took place recently at our Balsz Community Center.
007This was held on May 16th. Sixty-four students in grades K through 5 will competed and we're thrilled to have this many students enjoy chess in our district, especially kindergarten students. I'd like to thank our gifted teacher out teachers Alison Geislinger Krotz for their support of this program. Also very special acknowledgement to Mr. Alek Apostolov. Alek owns a chess school and has generously donated his time and expertise to the Balsz chess program this year. Congratulations to all of our chess players. We have a public meeting scheduled at Griffith Elementary School in the cafeteria on May 21st starting at 6 p.m. please come and hear about the exciting plans for the new Pat Tillman Middle School project. Thank you and this concludes my comments for this evening. As a sign-off I just like to thank all of
008our teachers and our students for a wonderful job they did this year in the 18-19 school year. We look forward to a very wonderful summer and coming back to school fresh and ready to go in August. Thank you and that concludes my comments for this evening.