Dear CUSD Families,
Happy New Year! I hope that you and your family enjoyed a wonderful winter break filled with time with those you love, doing the things you most enjoy. As we enter January, we begin the second half of the 2024-2025 school year. The days and weeks from now until the end of school are always filled with an array of events and activities – as well as what feels like an ever-increasing speed to summer vacation. We have five months left of school and a lot to accomplish in support of your students now until June.
The first half of the school year was filled with many exciting accomplishments that support our long-term goals for CUSD students, which I am including below as a reminder to our continuing work:
- To increase CUSD’s overall English Language Arts and Math achievement and lower performance gaps between student demographic subgroups as identified by race/ethnicity, language ability, socioeconomic status, and ability through establishing consistency and coherence in teaching and learning Districtwide.
- To increase student sense of belonging and connectedness and reported feelings of safety in their school communities. To reduce differential gaps between schools and/or demographic subgroups of students in CUSD.
- Create, implement, and expand systems of two-way engagement with the CUSD community, and support sites in becoming the key providers of community information related to their specific communities.
- To continue to maintain facilities while ensuring the District’s fiscal health and to work to build broad-based support for future bond efforts to rebuild and modernize aging facilities.
The latest rankings on the California State Dashboard show that CUSD students are 48.6 percent higher than standard in English Language Arts and 21.1 points above standard in Mathematics. You can view the full results of the California Dashboard at http://caschooldashboard.org.
To further improve school connectedness and engagement, including student grades and number of days in attendance, we kicked off CUSD Cares Middle School Intramurals in the fall. You can read more about the successful implementation here. This spring, we will continue to enhance and grow our Middle School Intramural program while also launching a pilot program for twelve elementary school sites, with hopes of launching the program at all CUSD elementary schools during the 2025-2026 school year.
Our focus on school facilities continues through a strategic investment in projects that maximize state matching funds – the only way the state of California pays for school improvements and upgrades. Our maintenance and operations staff has also worked to identify millions in grants, rebates, and other sources to enhance our facilities budget. Overall, school facilities maintenance and repairs exceed available funding; however, even with these challenges, there is incredible work happening across our District to enhance school facilities for our students.
You can learn more about how school funding works in the state of California by visiting our website. We’ve produced two videos to explain the Local Control Funding Formula (and why CUSD falls to the bottom of the list for state funding), as well as how the state funds facilities upgrades and improvements.
Finally, as we begin the New Year, I want to invite you to my upcoming “Coffee with Chris” events that are planned in the next few months. “Coffee with Chris” is a great opportunity to learn more about the school district, ask your questions, and provide direct feedback to me. I look forward to meeting with you at one of the dates below:
- Friday, February 7, 2025, Truman Benedict Elementary, 8:00 a.m.
- Friday, March 14, 2025, Canyon Vista Elementary, 8:30 a.m.
- Friday, April 18, 2025, Carl Hankey K-8, 8:15 a.m.
Here’s to wishing you a very Happy New Year and a great beginning to 2025.
Sincerely,
Dr. Chris Brown
Superintendent