Monthly Board Update
At its first meeting of the new calendar year, the SUSD Governing Board elected new Board members Dr. Donna Lewis as President and Mike Sharkey as Vice President. Expect to start hearing from Dr. Lewis in this location next month.
In the meantime, 2024 Board President Dr. Libby Hart-Wells shares this parting message with us:
Hello, Scottsdale Unified Community,
Welcome to 2025! Speaking of welcome, the Governing Board reconstituted at the top of the year, welcoming three new Board members to the dais - Dr. Donna Lewis, Dr. Matt Pittinsky and Mr. Mike Sharkey. We owe a debt of gratitude to all SUSD Board members, past and present, who selflessly serve(ed) our students, teachers and staff, not for personal gain but rather for a greater cause and purpose beyond themselves. #BecauseKids
To close out 2024, the Board unanimously approved several hiring policies to bring them into alignment with recent changes in state law. The hardworking Transportation and Finance departments provided an important update and recommendations for navigating the continued challenges in meeting legally required transportation demands. The district's recommendations, which included adding a new vendor for contracted transportation service, were unanimously approved by the Board.
The Assessment and Accountability department reviewed Spring 2024 state academic assessment scores with the Board. Comparing scores across the county, state and nation, our SUSD students demonstrated higher average scores than their peers across the board. Drilling down into the Arizona Academic Standards Assessment (AASA) and ACT scores to compare English Language Arts and Math scores for grades 3-8 and 11 with specific peer districts in the Valley, SUSD ranked first or second in all but 8th grade math (fifth) and 7th grade English Language Arts (third, due to a two-way tie for first). Well done, SUSD students and teachers!
But we are not done. Compelling data was shared, suggesting student learning during the global pandemic was less impacted at SUSD for those students who chose to be in an SUSD classroom. Put differently, students who were able and chose to learn in one of our exemplary SUSD schools with our award-winning teachers throughout the pandemic experienced a return to rigorous academic achievement more quickly than alternative scenarios. This is a testament to the disciplined approach District leadership and the Governing Board at that time, which included the three most recent outgoing Board members, Ms. Julie Cieniawski, Mr. Zach Lindsay, and me, took to use knowledge-based public health mitigation strategies through the height of the global pandemic.
Before you go hug your student or dash off a note of thanks to your student's teacher, I want to wish you many thanks for the honor and privilege of serving this district and for the opportunity to make good progress towards realizing the district's strategic vision of providing every student a world-class, future-focused education.
To a happy and healthy 2025 for you and your loved ones,
Elizabeth Hart-Wells, Ph.D.
Former SUSD Governing Board President
Dear Friends and Neighbors,
The awards and recognitions continue to roll in for our esteemed SUSD students and staff. The Board celebrated Saguaro Theatre Director Dr. Tim McCandless who was named the Arizona Thespians' Central Region 2024 Teacher of the Year. We are sincerely grateful to Dr. McCandless for his exemplary work and that he chooses to offer his talents in support of the Sabercat students. The Board also celebrated the district's Native American Education program for earning the Region I National Johnson O’Malley Association Exemplary Program Award. The long-standing district program delivers federally mandated supports to our Native American student body, which is over 450 students strong.
And, as before, this school year is promising to be bling-laden for our fine arts students and student athletes. Be sure to check out the Athletics and Fine Arts sections of the Source for the first of several hard-earned regional and state championships by SUSD students.
In alignment with the district Strategic Plan to optimize resources and strengthen community partnerships, the Board has formalized a new partnership with the City of Scottsdale, approving a lease for underutilized land at the district's former Cholla campus on Via Linda, just west of Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd. The lease allows for a temporary fire house to reside in the building previously occupied by NOAH.
You may recall in the spring, the Board formalized into policy recognition of the Scottsdale District Administrators Association. For no reason other than antiquated and oversimplified designations, this group of valuable employees did not fall into other categories of employee classifications. The Board finalized a remedy by unanimously accepting and approving a new employee agreement between the district and the newly minted employee association.
If you have any lingering doubts about the positive impact SUSD students and staff make on our community, then let this be the last of them: SUSD was honored with the Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce 38th Annual Sterling Award in the Big Business category. Honors and awards like the Sterlings are possible because of and belong to our remarkable students and dedicated staff. These achievements don't happen in a vacuum. Rather, it takes an equally dedicated community. And that is you. Please accept the Governing Board's grateful thanks for all you do to support the Scottsdale Unified School District. #BecauseKids
Wishing you and your loved ones a peaceful holiday season,
Libby Hart-Wells, Ph.D.
SUSD Governing Board, President
Hello, Friends and Neighbors,
I hope you all are enjoying the fall weather, sports, student performances, and the many awards and recognitions earned by our students, teachers and staff announced over the past month. Bear with me. We will get to the Governing Board's work in a minute because I am not one to bury the lead.
Dr. Scott Menzel, our award-winning superintendent, was recently named the Arizona School Administrators' 2024-25 National Superintendent of the Year. This award is yet another testament to Dr. Menzel's leadership and dedication to quality education for all. The Governing Board, and I hope you, sincerely congratulates Dr. Menzel on his well-earned and well-deserved award.
The Board also honored Anasazi Elementary's Angie Griffith, who earned the illustrious Arizona International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme 2024 Teacher of the Year. The Board and I extend a heartfelt congratulations to Ms. Griffith and thank her for her amazing - and now award-winning - work. #BecauseKids
In keeping with doing good work for good reasons, the Governing Board unanimously approved a new district human growth and development and sexual education curriculum. The Board thanks the curriculum committee, which was comprised of staff, nurses, parents, and two Board members, for their good work in selecting and recommending the new sex education curriculum. Human growth and development and the challenges that come with it are normal. The newly approved curriculum offers age-appropriate education of the cognitive, emotional, physical and social aspects of sexuality that will empower our students to put their health and well-being first. This milestone is long overdue for our students and families.
Another major achievement for SUSD and our Scottsdale community was the Board's formalization of a shared use agreement with the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Scottsdale. This formal partnership allows for establishing a new Girls and Boys Club branch at Tonalea Middle School. The newly minted partnership has been years in the making and will breathe new life into underutilized space in south Scottsdale, complete with a planned Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts/Agriculture and Mathematics (STEAM) makerspace studio, tech lab, arts room and teen center. The Board sincerely thanks the many community members and district leadership who have been instrumental in making this partnership a reality.
Along the lines of finances, the Board formalized improvements in the district’s bidding and purchasing policy, DJE. The Board also received presentations on the 2023-2024 Annual Financial Report and the Fiscal Year 2024 reports on the voter-approved Maintenance & Operations Override, District Additional Assistance Override, and Bonds. If you missed these important reviews of the use of taxpayer resources, you can view them on the district’s YouTube channel.
I hope you are as proud of our district as I am because this was just a small snippet of good news and great goings-on in our SUSD schools. As we head into November, I wish you and your family grace and peace.
Libby Hart-Wells, Ph.D.
SUSD Governing Board, President
Hello SUSD Families and Neighbors,
I’m happy to report the Governing Board has unanimously approved SUSD’s 2024-25 Wildly Important Goals and Key Performance Indicators. As I shared last month, these goals and indicators will serve to continue the district’s progress towards ensuring a world-class and future-focused education for all of our students.
The Audit Committee, which was established in 2021 to provide a structural, systematic oversight of the district’s governance, risk management, and internal control practices, submitted its risk-based audit plan to the Governing Board for its consideration and approval. After thoughtful diligence, the Committee chose to prioritize transportation and health insurance as the two areas where audits could provide maximum benefit. The Governing Board has unanimously accepted and approved the committee’s priority audit recommendations. On behalf of the Governing Board, we thank the community volunteers who serve on the committee and dedicate their time and expertise to the healthy governance and operation of our district.
Lastly, and importantly, we need your help. Several SUSD schools have been materially disrupted recently by non-credible threats and hoaxes. Social media exacerbated the fear unnecessarily and to the detriment of our kids and community, even after law enforcement investigated and determined the threats to be non-credible.
School safety is a top priority for the district. The law establishes serious consequences for interference with or disruption of an educational institution. On behalf of the Governing Board, we are asking you to please model responsible social media use and behavior. If you see, hear or read something concerning and threatening, report it immediately to the police or school administrator. Please do not repost it or share it on social media.
The district has strong and respectful partnerships with the Scottsdale, Phoenix and Paradise Valley Police departments, all of whose top leaders took part in an SUSD town hall event this week at Chaparral High School to discuss the recent rash of school threats, how they are investigated and how they are determined to be credible or non-credible. If you were not able to attend the event, I recommend you watch the video of the event posted on the district’s YouTube channel.
Again, school safety is a top priority. We encourage you to stay vigilant by reporting concerns through the proper channels. Thank you for your cooperation, collaboration and support in keeping our schools safe.
Libby Hart-Wells, Ph.D.
SUSD Governing Board President
Happy September, Scottsdale!
When you think about how many languages you speak, do you ever count math as one? Using an informed guestimate that the probability you answered ‘yes’ is near 0%, I ask: why not?
Notice what I did there? I asked a decidedly non-math question, and then used math to formulate a numerical response based on probability. That numerical response led me to communicate a written response. Folks, in a nutshell, that is how AI works. It’s math and probability and more math. AI is not a thinking person nor in possession of any sentient abilities like caring, loving, empathy, dignity, respect or soft skills of any kind.
If you observed that the mathematical processes used by AI sound similar to how you arrive at a decision without using math, then you paid attention. Or, perhaps, you do use math to make a decision and simply don’t realize it. There is a scientific basis for using human-like words and phrases like ‘large language models,’ ‘neural networks’ and ‘hallucinations’ to describe AI systems and the mathematical models running them.
Yet, big and important differences exist. One, you have the ability to discern between numbers that are facts and numbers that are 'funny math'. AI, not so much. Two, AI is able to ingest extraordinary amounts of data, process it all using the exact same equation (read: algorithm), then spit out a result that can be - and often is - biased by the data ingested. The human mind is an engineering, chemical and physiological marvel, but even so, it is not able to intake gigabytes of data in nanoseconds, let alone exercise enough discipline to use the exact same equation to iteratively process it all.
This is a key reason SUSD is putting math at the center of its 2024-25 Wildly Important Goals (WIGs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Our district’s job is to educate students in a way to provide them with relevant, transferrable skills to critically think for themselves. How to think, not what to think. Critically think, not reductively think. To do so requires logic. Math is just that: a logic framework. Our present exists in the context of communications, including mathematical communications like AI and machine learning (ML is one type of AI).
In 2024, relevant, transferrable skills to critically think means possessing strong, sound, foundational math skills.
I encourage you to learn more about SUSD’s proposed 2024-25 WIGs and KPIs. And if your math communications skills could benefit from a refresher, then consider your SUSD student would likely welcome someone to talk to in the language of modern math. And who better than you?
Thank you for reading and thinking with me,
Libby Hart-Wells, Ph.D.
SUSD Governing Board President