001All right, welcome everyone. Um, I'm Ryan Bur, the chief communications officer for Capistroni Unified School District. I want to welcome everyone here tonight and also online. Um, thank you for being with us. We have several of these coming up this school year and we will be live streaming and recording them and sending them out to families to make it convenient for everyone. Um we wanted to start the school year um Dr. Greg Merwin who who will be speaking shortly and I were discussing how we started the workshops this year. And really we wanted to just give a tutorial to parents about how to access all of the resources and tools that we offer parents and students um go through that to really empower our parents to work with us in the education of um CUSD
002students. And so that is what we are here tonight to do. The agenda is an introduction to the school district. Um we'll we will discuss our capital commitments and how the different resources and tools um fit into each of those academics, experiences and f and being future ready. Where do parents get help and information? Um future parent workshop calendar so you can mark your calendars for those coming up the rest of the school year. Questions and answers. And then a brief survey so we can get your feedback. Capistrani Unified has 64 schools, um 40,000 students, 4,200 employees. We are um serving a district over 200 square miles, over 2 million square feet of building space. And I always like to put that in there because the state does not provide funding for the maintenance and
003operations of the school district. So FA facilities and maintenance and operations are things that we have to use our general fund for. Um and we get that question a lot. We serve the cities of Alisa VJO, Dana Point, Laguna Niguel, Mission Viejo, Ranch of Santa Margarita, San Clemeni, San Juan Capistrano, and unincorporated areas of Lera Ranch and Rancho Mission Viejo. And with that, I will now turn it over to Dr. Greg Merwin to discuss our commitment to academics. All right. Thank you very much, Ryan, and welcome everyone. Thank you for being here both in person and online. And so, as Ryan said, we have three basic kind of core commitments that we believe in here in Capron Unified. And we focus all of our efforts on those things. And so, as Ryan said, academics first
004and foremost, experiences for our students, and then being future ready. So, we'll start first of course with academics. And the way we describe this for our um for our community is that we have a commitment to a world-class education. So what does that mean? It means that we want every one of our students to adapt and excel so that they are prepared for a rapidly changing world. I think we would all agree that it is constantly changing and we want them to be ready for anything. So how so what does that look like then? We call it the vision of a CSD graduate. We want every one of our students in CUSD to develop these five attributes so that when they start in preschool and move all the way through the system, elementary, middle to
005high school, we want them to graduate with these five attributes. Continuous learner, engaged citizen, inspired leader, innovative problem solver, and skilled communicator. Those five attributes are strong skills so that students can be successful in whatever they want to do. And we literally start in preschool. Our preschool teachers have lessons developed to start for students to start exploring and building those skills. And it starts there in preschool all the way through high school. So we have another way to describe this vision of a CD graduate. And if you're in the room with us right now, you can see on the tables this same graphic. It's called the vision of a CD graduate. And we like to it's important to share this every time that we we come and we speak. And we start with this because
006it gives context on what we're doing for all of our students. So you can see the the graduate there in the center looking out to the future. And you can see kind of that ready to go. I have what I need and I am ready for the future. The graduates looking out and then around the uh around the graduate are those five attributes that I just described on the last slide. So again, we want all of our students to have these attributes or skills when they leave us and move on to college, career, military, whatever their path is. This is very um I I believe in this as a professional but also personally because I have a son who I have two sons in the system and my older son just graduated from Dana Hills
007High School last uh last June and he's now in Saddleach for as a first year um as a his first year in college. And so I am seeing firsthand how important these attributes are for him as he navigates college, as he starts working, as he starts finding his way in the world. These kind of soft skills are critical. So I'm seeing it now play out with my own family. And I and he started in first grade all the way through uh to uh graduating last year. And watching the students develop these all along the way, that's what we want for our students. they are ready to do. They're ready to be successful in whatever they choose. So, we start first with that. That's the big picture. That's what we want for our students. That that's
008the goal of every single one of our educators, our principles, all the people in our schools here at the district, aligning to this vision. So, what can you do parents? Tonight is about navigating the system. So, what can you do? We start first with canvas. You're like, okay, why would you start with that? Well, because this is such a critical tool for our families to know how to navigate the learning management system that the students are using starting at sixth grade. Every single teacher all the way through the system uses Canvas and it is a terrific tool to help you stay uh to watch how your student is doing and to be able to help them. So, you'll see along the way tonight that we have included the search bar on the slide because we
009want to help you again navigate. What's the best way to navigate and figure out how to use Canvas? The first thing you do is you go to our website and then you use the search function in the upper right corner. Let me show you where that is. So when you go to our website, go right up here to the search bar and this is your friend. You always want to go to the search bar. The search bar will take you right where you want to go. Click and there is that that friendly face, the search bar. I'm there for you to help you out. So to learn how to use Canvas, you go to the website, go to the search bar, and just type in Canvas. Then it pops up this terrific uh support for
010you. So in the bottom lefthand corner, those are all links to take for parents so you can observe your students canvas account. And then on the right there are tips. Now let me share very quickly that I have Canvas on my phone. This is a great mobile app. And right now I can see how my son is doing. I shouldn't probably show that too much. I can see exactly what his grades are. I can see how he did on his quizzes and tests today. I can then also message his teachers directly right now by just clicking on the course message and boom, I have contacted the the teacher and said, "What can I do to help my son? Why does he have a zero from from the work today?" Okay, so that is how powerful
011that tool is that you can real time anytime know exactly how your student is doing. And so this starts again, like I said, in sixth grade. Elementary teachers, some of them use it, some of them don't. If they don't use Canvas, you just ask them, "What's the best way for me to to uh stay in touch with how my child is doing?" But when they hit sixth grade all the way through 12th grade, this is a tremendous tool that you can put on your phone, you can look at it on your computer, and you can instantly find out how your student is doing. So, how do you navigate CUSD all the way through? This is a great tool if you have a student with an IEP, if have a student who needs special education services,
012then we have some options for you as well specifically for uh for those families. So again, here is the search bar. Type in special education overview in our on our district website and then you will see some tremendous information for you that's available. First, on the website, the special education website, you have handbooks, engagement binders, staff directories, information on things such as ESY, extended school year, and then also a very important link to our community advisory committee website. That is a great circle. It's like a network of families that support each other with special education. So, these are families of students who have IEPs and 504s. They meet once a month, so you'll see their meeting information. They have who to call directories for special education. They have acronym guides. So, if you can't remember
013what what is a BIP versus an FBA versus an IEP, what are all these acronyms? They actually have guides for you to support families. And anytime you see this CAC logo, you will see it on every school website. You will see it on our district website. You just click on that logo. It'll take you right there. So, this is a tremendous um support for any family who have has a student with an IP or a 504. Other questions you might have along the way as you navigate the CUSD system are about curriculum and instructional materials. What's the curriculum that's being used in my child's classroom? What are the materials they use? Well, we have a couple of options for you to show you exactly uh how to access that information. So again, starting with our
014with our district website, you then go to the search bar and you type in IMC, that's instructional materials center. We have two of them. One is online and one is here in the district office. So the online version when you when you search that when you go to the search bar, it'll take you to the website and then you can look on the IMC website. You can see you can type in the name of your your student's school and see their library book collection. Every book that is in the library at that school is on that list. You can also see policies and state laws and all the information regarding the curriculum that we use. You also have access to uh the complaint process if you have a concern about the curriculum. That's also located
015there. So that is a great resource for families. But then if you are more of a face tof face person, you'd rather make the trip down to the district office, feel free to do so because we have our our physical IMC on the second level of the district office and you all you have to do is contact the instructional material specialist via email or phone, make an appointment, and you can come in and view all of the curriculum. And that's a picture of one of the um one of the many bookshelves of the different materials we have in our classrooms. So you're welcome to do either. You can either go online or you can come in and look at it uh with an appointment. So moving from curriculum materials into the actual instruction that we
016use in classrooms. So how do we instruct the stu our students? Because we use research and evidence-based strategies in all of our classrooms to make sure that our students are succeeding. We call it great first instruction or GFI. There's another acronym for you. Great first instruction. Every student deserves a great education. It starts with great first instruction. It's the foundation of engaging, supporting, and challenging our students. So, if you're in person, then you have a hard copy of this. Let me Can I grab it? And online, you will be receiving the link to the PDF for this document. And it shares in in parentfriendly language, not education ease, but in parentfriendly language what great first instruction is. And so this is very helpful. They'll click it on here and you can see this is what
017they have here in person and you can click the link and see it. This is how lessons are structured. So you can ask the teacher, you can say, can you tell me how you're using grade first instruction in in my child's classroom? And then they can share, oh well, we clearly defined the goals at the beginning of the lesson. We use strategies such as XYZ. We have interactive these are our opportunities for them to interact. Here's how we check to see if they're learning. So this is these are this is the expectation across the district and every classroom that our students are using great first instruction to um to instruct our students and meet their needs. And I'm now going to turn it back over to Ryan and he's going to talk more about how
018we are collaborating and engaging with our parents. >> All right. This is a brand new website that we put on um our web page and actually you guys sort of get a first look at it. We haven't put it out formally yet to parents. We've still been receiving feedback and building it as we go. But you can go to the search bar on our website and and type in collab co lab and it will take you to this website. Looks like this at the top. Um this was a really important thing for us to do. Um and it's actually an offshoot of a larger document that we created last year and sent out to parents. One of the pieces of feedback we got from parents was that a 12-page document that was pretty heavy with
019with um a lot of verbiage was was difficult for them to get through and really understand what they had access to. And so that document is still available. I actually just updated it and we will update it again um shortly, but you'll be able to find it on this website along with um these 10 bullet points of what parents can do. These rights come directly from California Education Code and from policies that we have in our school district. So, um parents can always participate in school activities, access and review educational materials. You can do this like like Dr. Merwin said through the IMC either here or online. You can also do this at the school sites. You can view the materials from your teachers or from your principles. Um you have the right to be
020notified and informed of of how your student is doing in school. And um this is something that um a lot of parents are unaware of, but um you know like my mom used to get calls if I was having problem sitting in class and being quiet or um if grades were falling or things like that. Those are those are things that parents should be hearing from school sites. You have the right to support learning at home and understand what that looks like. Um, again, a great resource for that is actually talking to the teacher or the principal at the school site. You have the right to participate in educational decisionmaking, and you can do that through uh PTA. You can do that at board meetings and tons of other parent involved meetings throughout the district.
021Um, you can expect a safe and supportive environment, request independent study, choose to opt out and consent, challenge instructional topics and materials, and discuss concerns with your teachers and your principal. This website also includes quick links that we have been updating. Um the reason why we have taken our time sort of pushing it out in the school year is we had changes to independent study and changes to the opt out process um based on rulings from the Supreme Court. So um we do have the the entire parent partnership document is linked online and you can access that. Now the annual notice you receive every year is also there. I know a lot of parents will only look at it briefly maybe at registration but never look at it again. That's another great um document that
022parents can take a look at in English and Spanish. Parental involvements and rights, those are um codified in California Ed Code. The opt out rights um also in California Ed Code. And then we just updated our student optout letter based on rulings from the Supreme Court. This is the best optout letter that parents can use and I would recommend that you had discussions with your teachers as you were going through that process. Um, we've seen some other optout letters that are a available online that are very dense and are not consistent or aligned with what we're actually doing in Capistrono Unified. This is the best place to start for that. Curriculum access and opt out is also codified in California ed code. There's links to th that education code, special education and disability rights and
023the safety act AB1955 is also available there. Um we will be we will be pushing this out formally in parent meetings at the beginning of October and then I would expect that um we would be sending out through communications to families directly in email um after October 9th. And now back to Dr. Merwin and our commute our commitment to great experiences. >> Thank you. >> Okay, so remember commitment number one was academics. Commitment number two experiences great experience for experiences for our students. So we start off with the concept of student well-being. We want our students to uh feel safe. We want them to feel connected. We want them to belong. And so you can see we call this focus on student well-being. We call it CUSD cares. There are three different key components that
024are it's not rocket science. We want kids to feel connected. We want our students to feel like they're part of a school community and we want students to have an opportunity to celebrate to celebrate with each other. And so this this um image here are our middle school students from the CUSD cares inter mural sports program. It's one of the programs that we offer to provide students with these opportunities and we'll talk a little bit more about that later. But again, we want great experiences for all of our students and CUSD Cares is one of the ways we do that. We also make sure that we offer student leadership opportunities on every single campus across the district. So, you'll see there are multiple opportunities. There is not a link here or a search bar here
025because we're going to ask you to talk to your school. Talk to your principal. Talk to the teachers and ask them what the school offers. In elementary, they offer student council. In our secondary schools, we have ASB, associate student body. We have peer assistance leadership. We have best buddies. We have AVID advanced uh via advancement via individual determination. And check this out. In case you don't have a student in a high school, about a hundred clubs on each campus, a hundred different types of clubs on each campus and of our high schools. And each one of those clubs has leadership opportunities on it. It has different off uh officer positions. It's serviceoriented and lots of different opportunities. So really do encourage our students to take advantage of such a wide variety of clubs on our
026high school campuses. We also are extremely proud of the great experiences that come out of our college and career advantage or CCA program. Now these are two images here of opportunities that our students have starting in middle school. So all of our middle school and high school students have opportunities to these different pathways and experiences that can really set them up for the future. So you notice uh like one that is uh our dental hygienists, another one that is related to engineering and look at this 25 different pathway options for career technical education. There was just a um I just read about a survey recently from um different businesses and organizations and they said that the number one thing that kids are lacking coming out of high school are experiences and careers. Said those that
027are coming out with where they've had some experiences as an intern where they've been doing real uh real work in that area, they come out u and they have an advantage. So look at this. 25 different pathways. I mean they are exceptional. And then not only that, but across all of our campuses, 179 different courses available. So everything from like my boys both took sports medicine. I mean that's a what a cool thing for students who are athletes and they're like, you know, I don't really want to do I'm not really into science. Well, sports medicine totally different. They can see an application. They were excited about it. So every kid has their own uh their own passion and their own niche. And so all of these CTE classes offered through our college and career
028advantage provide them with tremendous opportunities across all of our schools. So we encourage you to go to the website to see it online and you can see all the different options. But then again, we don't have the search bar here because we want you to go to the school, ask the school which courses do you offer here? Okay, you can take courses across all the schools. You could go to Dana Hills and take a course at Toro if you want after school, but each high school has their own opportunities and areas of focus. So go to your school, ask and find out what pathways and what courses are offered. And again, it's college and career advantage and you can check that out on the website. We're also very proud of our awardwinning immersion programs. So,
029we have diff two different language immersion program options in our district and we won a state award for this a couple years ago. We So, the best way to find out more about these immersion programs, use the search bar, go to language immersion programs, hit submit, and then you'll see different options. We have a again award-winning Mandarin program and we also have an award-winning Spanish immersion program. uh many of our we have multiple pathways for students elementary, middle and high to be able to take these different pro to be part of these programs. So definitely look look this up to get more information on the website. We also are very well known for our visual and performing arts also known as VAPA. So different courses and opportunities are available at every school. Our board consistently
030supports the value and the quality of our VAPA programs. And please go and talk to your teachers and your principal and say what are they what are the offerings at my school. So uh you can of course go and use the search bar and look for visual and performing arts on our website on the district website but go and talk to the teachers and principal and you'll find out exactly what's offered at your school. And I mentioned a little bit before about athletics. We have uh a tremendous athletic program in our in our school district for the students that are interested in athletics, but look at uh you'll notice here on this slide starting in elementary school. We actually have uh something we're very proud to start this year called noon time sports. So at
031every single one of our elementary schools starting in October next month, our students will be playing organized sports programs during lunchtime. Then in sixth through 8th grade, I mentioned the CST cares intramural sports program and you can see some of the students again there where every student who wants to can participate and this is an exciting thing. They play at lunchtime and they they do the sports at their school, but then they compete against other schools for championship rights in both in soccer, basketball, flag football, and volleyball. So, we have thousands of students coming out and participating in the inter murals. And if you go to one of our middle schools, you'll see the banners of the champions proudly displayed um at the middle schools. And then finally, our our comprehensive high schools. 29 different
032CIF sports opportunities at a high school. 29. So, lots of options for our for our students when they're in high school to participate in CIF. And so then moving on to our final commitment. We talked about academics. We talked about experiences. And now we want to talk about then looking to the future. What are we doing to support our students to be future ready? So, we just want to share a couple of data points for you that show how our district, how CUSD supports students to be ready for the future. First and foremost, consistently um over many years, we are the highest performing large district in the state of California. We have close to 89% pass rate for advanced placement exams in high school. So for our students who are taking that higher level u
033coursework that then gives them college credit 80 almost 89% are passing those tests. We have a n over a 95% graduation rate when you look at the comparables across other districts. It's nowhere close to that. And then look at this score. Look at this uh statistic. 79% almost 80% of our students attend college after graduation. So we are preparing our students to be future ready. And as I mentioned before in that previous slide about uh the uh career technical education courses, we looked at 179 different courses and all the pathways. Look at how many students are taking advantage of those. 8,755 of our students are taking those courses. So they are preparing themselves to be future ready. And again coming back to this is that we want then with all the experiences and the academics
034to make sure that our graduates are leaving us with those attributes so that they can be ready to be successful in whatever they want to do. So uh Ryan is going to finish off with sharing a little bit about how can you get more information as a parent and how can you navigate the system. So I'm going to hand it back over to Ryan. Okay, as we had discussed um about a half hour ago, your students Canvas account for secondary for middle and high school will have a lot of information for each class and a lot of communication from teachers. That's a good place to go. Spend time reviewing your schools and district's regular messaging. You'll see it on Instagram and Facebook, sometimes on X. Um, you'll also see it in your email and that
035is a good place to make sure that you are staying in contact and you understand sort of what's coming up at the school and the district. Attend school and district meetings, chat with the principal. They have a lot of coffee chats with principles at elementary, middle, and high schools. Um, coffee with Chris, our superintendent will be holding um, eight or seven more of those this school year. PTA, of course, at the school site. And then we also have the president's and the advocacy meeting that meets here at the boardroom English language advisory council CAC and a lot of other meetings. Visit the school's website using the search bar. Same with the district office or the district website. Talk to your teacher and talk to your principal. They are going to be your your best place
036to go to really get an idea specific to your student um how you can be involved and work with them in a partnership. for special education, contact your IEP case manager. Um, this is also a great place to even just talk to your teacher and um and collaborate with them, collaborate with the principal and the school site. Get involved with the community advisory committee. Um, contact your CAC site representative and then we have email addresses to the CAC here for you as well. Where do you find additional resources? We have the family resource center available online. We also have it here at the district office. It's open when the district office is open from 8 to 4:30 every day. And um it is right in the lobby of the of the front doors. You can
037also find it online. a great resource for all kinds of things happening in the community and a lot of other um organizations that we work with for students mental health and for other supports for families and students. Here's our parent workshop calendar. So, the next workshop is November 13, 2025. Um and then the dates for the future ones, these will all be held here in the boardroom and also livereamed and recorded. So, we will live stream these, record them, and then send them out to all families as well. And this one in October is going to be awesome. Um the from phonics to fluency. So, we want to really teach um young families with um young kids how to support reading at home. We will be talking through this school year about a commitment to
038making sure that kids can read by grade three. um that really supports their mental health and their academic success as they move from grade three all the way up through um their senior year and beyond. So the goal really will be for the district to look at how are we supporting classrooms and young people in um TK, kindergarten, first and second grade. What do those resources look like? How are we supporting teachers? And then what can families do to help us? So, this will be a great one um that um is coming up in a month. And finally, we'll end with questions. No questions. The question is about homework and it depends on the teacher and so there are teachers who use it and teachers who don't. We don't have a policy that states whether
039you should use it or not. I would say that a discussion probably this school year and beyond will be in um inside the district office and with teachers and principles to really understand and and figure out what is the best use of homework, how should how should the time in class be utilized and what would homework look like outside of that and and aligning policies to be consistent across the board. But at this point it depends on the teachers. Anything you want to add? >> Yes. So that will definitely be a topic this next year to talk more about homework and strategically how to best support our students with that. I also want to point out too for those of you in the room and online I believe we have a link as well. If
040you could give us feedback on tonight because what we want to do is build on offer workshops throughout the year. We want to offer workshops that parents have interest in um that are helpful and so please uh take a moment to give some feedback on the content we provided on uh logistics of the meeting. You'll see there are a couple things on this this brief survey. So, we would really appreciate that. And online as well, uh, if you could, uh, use the link to give us some feedback. And again, as uh, Ryan shared, we'll be back in October to talk about, uh, how to teach, uh, how you can support reading and how we can make sure our all of our kids are reading by the third grade. So, we are very appreciative of everyone
041being here. So, are there any other questions that we can help with before we close for the night? Going once, going twice. All right, that's it. So, we really appreciate everyone uh here in person and online. Thank you so much for being here uh tonight. Have a good evening.