Rescue Union School District

Board Of Trustees Meeting Highlights - August 14, 2018 

We continue our efforts to communicate effectively and in a timely fashion with our families and staffs. We know not every parent, teacher, or staff member can attend our Board meetings, so we will provide a brief update after each Board meeting, sharing highlights and actions taken by the Board. As always, please let us know how to better serve and communicate with you! We want to be partners with you in the educational journey of the children entrusted to us.

UPDATES/REPORTS:

Superintendent Report

The Superintendent reported that we have had a fantastic start to the new year. In visiting every site we have seen many happy kids, parents, amazing staff and beautifully prepared campuses and classrooms.  Mrs. Olson thanked our hardworking crews and departments for their work all summer to prepare for the start of school. This included the Technology Department, Utility Techs, Maintenance and Operations, Summer School Staff, Custodial Staff, District Office Personnel, Food Service and Transportation. She also thanked administrators, teachers and paraprofessionals for all they have done to prepare for the new year.

She reported on the staff development day on Tuesday, August 7 and shared our appreciation to Rolling Hills Church for working with us to use their facility. Our speaker Kelly Rizzi, presenting on Trauma Informed Practice, was wonderful and all the evaluations were 100% positive and supportive of her message. Already this year, only 3 days in, we see evidence of the things she talked about in many, many classrooms and this will greatly benefit our students and staffs. Brain Breaks, learning about how the brain works, Comfort Corners for self-regulation, and learning about mindfulness and empathy are just a few things seen in many classrooms across the district and grade levels.

Dave Scroggins, who is currently attending an SEL Conference with Green Valley and Rescue staff will be presenting information regarding our test scores at the next Board meeting. Our scores have gone up in both ELA and math and in addition to that, our EL students have showed tremendous growth. We are very proud!

Mrs. Olson commented that we are encouraged to have more students enroll than expected; two additional teachers have been hired. This made it necessary to change a good many schedules at Marina Village, because we had to hire an additional teacher to accommodate the numbers, but things have settled in now and classes are up and running smoothly.
So far we have had 3 back to school nights: Pleasant Grove on August 8, and Rescue and Marina Village on August 9. All were well attended and the schools and classrooms look amazing. The new building at Marina is amazing. It was wonderful to see how excited the students and parents were. There are still just a few things to complete.

Mrs. Olson also gave a big thank you to Levi Cambridge, Principal, Sam Schlesinger, Assistant Principal, Amber Heinlein, School Secretary and Rene Buenrostro, Database Support Specialist for working around the clock on the schedule as students continue to enroll.

Lastly the Superintendent thanked the Board for giving her the privilege and honor to serve the district. She shared her appreciation for the time and effort the Board puts into RUSD, for working with her and providing direction.

Facilities Report

Assistant Superintendent of Business Services, Sean Martin, provided an update on summer facility projects that included:

• Marina Village two-story project The majority of construction is complete Still working on gutters/exterior items Additional furniture is on order Fire lane and south east access being finished up Landscaping in process and must be completed by mid-October
• Marina Village Multipurpose Room Window repair on south side and leaks eliminated
Repairs for some termite damage
• Jackson Roof Replacement Roof replacement completed just before staff returned
• Portable Roof Replacement 10 portable roofs were completed: 3 at Rescue, 2 at Lake Forest, 2 at Jackson and 3 at Green Valley

Support Services

Director of Student Support Services, Laura Hendrix provided a report on the summer school programs. The Extended School Year 4 week program began in June with 2 classes. There were 9 students in the K-3 class and 11 students in the 5-9 class. We also had a student from another district who was able to “buy a seat” to participate in the program.

Our summer program, coordinated by Amy Bohren, EL Coordinator, offered hands-on learning experiences for students entering grades K-8 with a strong focus on building academic language use in both student speaking and writing. The program ran for 3 weeks from July 9 to July 27 and all EL’s, socio-economically disadvantaged students, and foster youth were encouraged to attend. We had 8 classes this year taught by 100% RUSD teaching staff and were supported by four district aides.
All teachers participated in a full day of professional development with Amy Bohren where they learned best practices and strategies that included increasing the frequency of academic language spoken by the student in their rooms and increasing the level of academic language and vocabulary in student writing.
This year’s attendance was excellent with an average of 140 students attending each day. Although all EL, SE and Foster Youth were invited as in prior years, there was an increase in outreach via the additional phone calls and emails to parents of students who were highly recommended to attend the summer program.

Technology

Larry Garcia, Information Technology Manger, reported that summer for his crew actually began in April with ERATE purchases. There were some areas in our infrastructure that needed to be updated. This included our main switch at the DO which was completed by the end of June. We were able to also purchase access points to provide wireless access outside for coverage to fields and parking lots for emergency purposes as well as other outside activities. They will be installed sometime this winter.

All Chromebooks have been cleaned and they are holding up well with only a few instances of damage.

The Tech Team is also working on Windows 10 upgrades. This may also involve upgrades to computers to make sure everything is running smoothly.

The PLTW labs also received an upgrade with grant funding for computer science. The desktop computers will be removed and will be replaced with laptops. This will give the program more flexibility to be truly mobile.

Technology Support Specialists, Dan Haver, has accepted another positon and in order to help with our budget constraints we have elected not to fill the position at this time.

The new Marina Village building classrooms are all equipped with 70 inch televisions with Google Chromecast integration. We were able to leverage the existing equipment to put in the new classrooms.

In addition to the other summer projects there were 40 teachers districtwide changing classrooms and another 19 with the new Marina Village building. This is a very time intensive project but everything was completed and ready before school began.
Mr. Garcia finished by stating that overall things went well over the summer and the department will continue to prioritize projects and manage schedules to provide outstanding service to students and staff.

ACTION ITEMS:

• The Board approved Resolution #18-14 Adoption Conflict of Interest Code Review for 2018.
• The Board approved the job description and salary schedule for Account Technician – Business Services.
• The Board approved:

- June 12, 2018 Regular Board Meeting Minutes
- District Expenditure Warrants and Purchase Orders
- Williams Quarterly Report
- Investment Portfolio Report
- Mandated Block Grant
- Personnel Actions
- Donations

NEXT MEETING: Board Study Session, August 28, 2018
Regular Board Meeting, September 11, 2018