May is filled with change and transitions. It is not unusual that these events are accompanied by stress. It’s fitting that May is Mental Health Awareness month. "It is the mission of the Vail School District to provide parents with safe and nurturing school communities where their children can obtain a quality education." While our primary purpose and focus is on providing high quality academics and programs to the students and families we serve, it is also true that many of us including staff, students, and families face challenges. 

At the Joint Site Council meeting held last fall, your elected Site Council representatives determined areas of focus for the district this school year. Two areas of focus they felt to be of most importance were Student Behavior and Mental Health/Wellbeing. 

As such, we are grateful to be able to add another tool in the toolbox to help with those challenges.

Vail is now excited to partner with Care Solace, an organization that provides care coordinators to available mental and behavioral health support in the community for all of our staff and families.

When a need arises, instead of Vail staff and counselors spending hours working to connect families to community resources, we will now be able to refer families to Care Solace. From there, it is a parent-driven process. A Care Solace coordinator then reaches out to the family to gain further information on preferences and support. These coordinators will work with families to coordinate services for them, including making calls to identify resources that meet their specific needs. A Care Coordinator will even make an appointment if a parent so chooses. 

We value our partnership with parents. It is our hope that Care Solace is just one more tool that parents can use to help navigate life’s challenges. 

If you’d like to get connected to Care Solace or learn more, go to caresolace.com/vailschooldistrict. 

Graduations are a normal thing across the country, but promotions from all of the lower grades are not done everywhere. While it may be hard to imagine, Vail didn’t always have high schools. Vail conducted an 8th grade promotion back when we only had one school as our way of sending our students off into the world. We’d been there for those nine years of K-8 and watched them struggle, grow, learn, and become wonderful. While promotions are a little bit of carry over from that old tradition, we also continue to do them as another opportunity to celebrate young people in our community. Those promotions also serve as an opportunity for parents, who are so deeply invested in our schools and who spend thousands of hours volunteering, to come celebrate with us and say goodbye as well. Promotions are an outward expression of the community coming together in a place “Where Education is a Community Effort.” 

We look forward to celebrating all of our graduates and students being promoted with you this month! 

Click HERE to get all the graduation and promotion information and to save the dates.

Bus Driver Appreciation Day was April 23rd. We are grateful for our amazing bus drivers who ensure our students arrive safely each day. Their care creates a positive environment that sets the tone for learning.

On that note, we are excited to have officially launched a Student Ridership System (SRS), which now allows the Transportation Department to more effectively perform the task of tracking students getting on and off buses. We have rolled this system out to our elementary and middle school students who ride buses and will launch the system at the high school level in the fall.

For years, we have manually tracked the students on our school buses. Unfortunately, that system was slow and sometimes unreliable. Because “we are never satisfied with the status quo,” we are fixing it!

With the new system, students will be given cards and lanyards with RFIDs. When they enter and exit their bus, they scan their card over a reader that has been installed at the entrance of the bus. This allows us to know exactly who is on the bus and the stop location where the child exited the bus. This also enables us to track students anytime there is a safety incident or accident involving the bus or when the whereabouts of a student are in question. 

Please reach out to our transportation team at (520) 879-2497 and select option 1 if you have any questions regarding this new system. 

The planning committee for Vail’s new PreK-8 school consisting of parents, staff, and community members has had several meetings since our last newsletter hit your inboxes. In that previous email, the naming committee was soliciting your input to help name the new school. We are excited to share that the Vail Governing Board has approved the name recommended by the committee. The new school will now be known as Saguaro Creek K-8 School. 

Each name - both “Saguaro'' and “Creek” - spoke to committee members and symbolized values committee members envision being reflected in the new school.

• Saguaro: A protected emblem of the desert, which serves as a nursery plant to other plants (connectedness), adapts to its harsh desert environment, and provides food and shelter (safety) to many plants and animals. 

• Creek: A natural waterway which draws diversity.

Thank you to all of you who participated in the naming committee survey last month. Your voice, as always, is deeply appreciated.

Further, last Thursday evening was the ground breaking ceremony for Saguaro Creek K-8. The event was packed full of students and performers from Ocotillo Ridge Elementary, Old Vail Middle School, and Cienega High School. We also enjoyed large crowds of parents, the planning committee, principals from around the district, the architect, the developer, and more. The key message of the evening from JV Nyman, Concord General Contracting President, was how much he loves to work on projects in Vail because Vail is a place, “Where Education is a Community Effort.” The evening was a demonstration of our motto in full force, and it was moving to be reminded just how much this community rallies around the growth and wellbeing of Vail’s youngest people - our students.

Thank you to all who helped to make the evening a magical one that won’t soon be forgotten by any who were there!

We are excited to share that of the 37 schools across Arizona that earned the distinguished A+ School of Excellence Award, SEVEN were in Vail! These recognitions are extremely difficult to earn and include a rigorous application process, including a lengthy written application followed up by two days of judges visits. A+ Awards mean far more than excellence on test scores. A+ requires looking under rocks and analyzing everything done at the school!

Congratulations to Cienega High School, Empire High School, and Esmond Station K-8 who celebrated their new or renewed A+ status with wonderful A+ celebrations last week! We look forward to Vail Academy & High School, Desert Willow Elementary School, Mesquite Elementary School, and Acacia Elementary School celebrating in the next few weeks!

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week. We are grateful to have such incredible teachers who provide wonderful support and instruction for young people in Vail. 

The week started off strong at Mesquite Elementary School. Teachers got a surprise when Principal Diane Vargo made an announcement that they could all leave class as soon as their substitutes arrived. Substitutes came from across the district, including former teachers who are now district office employees and principals/assistant principals from other schools.

Mesquite teachers went to The Hilton, and Outback Steak donated a free meal to all of them!! The PTSA donated the charter bus so they could enjoy the ride down there.

Watch the KGUN9 story on this event HERE. 

If you love your children’s teachers as much as we do, please consider letting them know with a message of gratitude as they head into the final weeks of the school year.

To the parents and guardians whose children are graduating from high school this month, I would like to thank you for trusting us with your most precious gift. We wish them the very best of luck moving forward and are excited to hear about their successes in the future. We are also deeply grateful for your partnership in their education, whether you recently joined us or sent us your children as preschoolers. Thank you!

To those of you who will be returning next school year, I would like to ask that you keep an eye out for an email to hit your inboxes in late June regarding Returning Student Registration. It is absolutely imperative that each student has this registration carefully and accurately completed each year. Your filling out the registration enables us to connect with you not only regarding exciting updates and important information, but it also enables us to connect with you in real time during emergency situations. 

Please ensure you have accurate email and cell phone information to provide during Returning Student Registration. We will be conducting multiple tests of our email and texting systems to ensure we can connect with you. 

Our first tests will be conducted on August 1, 2024.

Until then, please have a wonderful rest of the school year and a great and safe summer break. 

Click HERE for the 2024-2025 student calendars. We look forward to seeing you in July!