South Whittier School District held their monthly board meeting Tuesday, November 13, at the district office. Board members and administrators recognized students from Los Altos for their academic achievement, teacher of the year, Guy Sardo, and heard presentations from Monte Vista principal, Andrea Larios, and Associate Superintendent of Educational Services, Martha Mestanza-Rojas.
Teacher Of The Year
South Whittier School board and administrators honored Teacher of the Year Guy Sardo from Graves Middle School. Attendees and the board got to hear from Dr. Fraijo, Graves’ principal, speak about the contributions and commitment that Mr. Sardo has shown Graves’ students. The board then honored Mr. Sardo with a congratulations cake.
Los Altos Student Recognition
Principal, Genevieve Silebi, recognized Los Altos students who have shown progress and growth in their academics. Congrats students! South Whittier School District is proud of you!
Monte Vista Elementary Presentation
Monte Vista principal, Andrea Larios, presented to the board her school’s academic achievement through process monitoring presentation.
She shared with the board student’s English Language Arts reading standard results that showed the amount of students who exceeded, met, or were near standard. Larios also talked about different ways that Monte Vista is using progress monitoring to assure the success of all students. Some examples of monitoring tools are CAASPP test results, assessing Universal Screener data, and assessing teaching.
Larios then shared about their reflective teaching and collaborative improvement method PDAR, which stands for plan, do, analyze, and reflect. This method allows for collaboration with teachers and their site instructional aide resulting in better teaching and better learning.
Lastly, Larios shared Monte Vista’s site focus standard, reading-literature. This standard refers to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
"During instruction, teachers provide students with multiple and frequent opportunities to discuss and collaborate ensuring the use of complete sentences and academic language by all students. Students will utilize sentence frames and cite textual evidence when they respond verbally and in written form.”
Dual Immersion Program Presentation
Associate Superintendent of Educational Services, Martha Mestanza-Rojas, shared with the board about the Dual Language Immersion Program that will begin at SWSD in the 2019-2020 school year.
Rojas shared California’s mission which is to have California schools, “affirm, welcome and respond to a diverse range of English Learner strengths, needs, and identities. California schools prepare graduates with the linguistic, academic and social skills and competencies they require for college, career, and civic participation in a global, diverse, and multilingual world, thus ensuring a thriving future for California.”
She then shared about the 90/10 model which will begin in kindergarten. Over the next few years the model will be modified to eventually teach all subjects in both languages at the 50/50 model. Research has shown that this model achieves higher level of literacy in both languages, higher level of academic achievement than just English-only instruction, closes the achievement gap quicker, and achieves higher levels of oral language and literacy in the target language.
Two kindergarten classrooms will open with this program at Los Altos Elementary and McKibben Elementary in the 2019-2020 school year. The program’s goals are that students will achieve bilingual proficiency in both English and Spanish, students will reach high levels of academic achievement in both languages, and students will become cross-cultural ambassadors for our school, community, and society.
Local Indicators For California Dashboard Presentation
Associate Superintendent of Educational Services, Martha Mestanza-Rojas, also shared a presentation about the local indicators for the California dashboard and if the district had met each indicator.
Priority One Indicator: Appropriately Assigned Teachers, Access to Curriculum-Aligned Instructional Materials, and Safe, Clean ad Functional School Facilities
Priority Two Indicator: Implementation of State Academic Standards
Priority Three Indicator: Parent Engagement
Priority Six Indicator: School Climate
Priority Seven Indicator: Broad Course of Access
Rojas explained the specifics of every indicator and if the district passed the expected level of each priority. She was happy to report that South Whittier met every priority indicator on the California dashboard.
The next board meeting will be held on Tuesday, December 11, at 6PM at the district office.