Continuing high performance
San Luis school earns excellent academic rating for third time
SAN LUIS, Ariz. — Desert View Elementary School has received an A for student achievement, marking the third time in recent years the San Luis campus has received the high rating from the Arizona Department of Education.
That accomplishment prompted a recent visit to the Desert View campus by Raymond Aguilera, superintendent of the Gadsden Elementary School District, to present a celebratory banner to the staff.
“What you have done is very difficult to accomplish, because there aren’t many schools with a demographic like ours, with its socioeconomic conditions and the high number of students who are in the process of learning English — which makes it all that much harder,” Aguilera said.
Desert View earned the A for the most recently completed academic year, 2016-17, by achieving 89.01 pounds out of a possible 100, under the AzMERIT rating system that assigns letter grades ranging from A to F for failing, based on student performance in learning English, math and science.
Desert View previously received excellent ratings in each of the last two years the Arizona Department of Education used the prior AIMS system to evaluate academic performance. 2016-17 is the first year for which the state has issued grades under the AzMERIT.
Desert View, which educates students in kindergarten through the sixth grade, is one of eight school in the Gadsden district that serve San Luis and the neighboring incorporated community of Gadsden.
“Congratulations on this achievement,” Aguilera told the school staff. “Be proud of that. Desert View is the star that guides the other schools in the district.”
Diana De Leon, a longterm substitute teacher at Desert View, said a sense of cohesiveness and teamwork among the staff has contributed to the A rating. “We have done it with a lot of hard work and the support of the school, including the principal and the other colleagues.”
Given that many of the students are still learning English as their second language, parental support has also been key to Desert View’s academic progress, second-grade teacher Nora Cardenas said.
“The challenge is not only to teach children when they don’t understand concepts but the language,” she said. “And (the challenge) is also to keep up the support of the parents, who help us by reinforcing in their children what they learn in class and who make sure their children come each day to school.”
Getting the A grade from the state “feels very good,” sixth-grade teacher Jaziel Alvarez said, “and that feeling can be seen reflected in the hallways, among the teachers and the students, who know they belong to a school that demands but that also gives.”
Meredith Nelson has been Desert View’s principal for the last seven years. “I am blessed,” she said. “I have an amazing team, amazing students and parents, and all the support of the community. The teachers push themselves harder than I push them. It really is teamwork and collaboration that (is necessary) to continue learning and growing.”
She conceded she and the staff experienced feelings of uncertainty about how well the school was doing academically in the two years after AIMS was discontinued and before AzMERIT was launched.
“We didn’t know if we were maintaining that rating,” Nelson said. “We had been working hard to maintain it and then, suddenly, they told us there would be no grades for two years.”