A message from the Superintendent
SPANISH VERSION
May 20, 2022
As we inch towards summer, the anticipation and excitement of the long break ahead is buzzing at every one of our school campuses. We have had an incredible school year, and we are ending it on high note, thanks to the incredible work of our teachers, classified staff, and administrators.
There is no doubt that the last few years have challenged each of us in ways we would have never expected. But for CUSD, the months that followed March of 2020 have given us a tremendous opportunity to invest additional state and federal dollars in ways that directly serve our students. CUSD has received nearly 100 million in COVID funding and we want you to know that we invested this additional funding directly into our classrooms to ensure that our students are the beneficiaries of these taxpayer resources.
Because of the leadership of our Board of Trustees, in collaboration with our teachers, classified staff and District administrators, we lowered class sizes across the district by hiring additional teachers. We hired full-time credentialed elementary interventionists to develop, implement, and support a systemic school-wide intervention plan to support every student by name, by need.
We provided additional sections for math, English language arts, and intervention for our secondary students and hired additional teachers for middle and high school English language development to decrease class sizes
We added additional classified staff to support our classrooms, hired credential physical education teachers for our elementary students, and created more opportunities for our teachers, classified staff, and administrators for professional development, collaboration, and planning time to focus on intervention and providing individualized support for each student.
We also continued our focus on social emotional learning, hiring additional counselors and lowering the counselor to student ratio across the district.
Our teachers, classified staff, and administrators have shown tremendous dedication and commitment to these strategies and their work is producing amazing outcomes for our students.
At the mid-year point, many of our elementary schools were showing extraordinary growth in math and English language arts and a considerable number of middle school students had surpassed their year-end growth goals in i-Ready math. Our middle school students were a positive outlier in national i-Ready achievement, surpassing the national averages and demonstrating that the strategy was effective and impactful. In choosing a program focused on student growth, we were able to set each student up for success, and they went above and beyond the challenge.
In high school, we are supporting students through academic intervention classes that are producing improvements in student grades and we are working to increase intervention-based tutorials in high schools next year.
So what does all of this mean?
It means that we have developed and implemented strategies using state and federal COVID funds to support every student, increase achievement, and prepare them for college, career, military service, and independent living after graduation.
These strategies are funded through 2023-24 and we are committed to working with our state legislators to continue to increase funding so that these valuable investments in our young people will stretch beyond the next few years. Our campaign, Raise the Base, made a huge difference. The state is talking about and beginning to deliver on the promise of increasing base funding for every public school child in California.
As I close, I want to thank each of you for your partnership and support this year. I wish all of you a very happy and restful summer break. We will see you again on August 16 for the first day of school!