Crane Governing Board Meeting at a Glance

On Tuesday, the governing board representing the Crane Elementary School District convened for its monthly meeting. Here’s a look at what occurred.

H.L. Suverkrup & Salida Del Sol presentations

The open session portion of the meeting kicked off with H.L. Suverkrup Elementary School’s Kids at Hope ambassadors discussing some of the “unsung heroes of HLS.”

The 6th grade ambassadors showcased a video that involved them talking to a few of the supporting staff members – such as the school’s registrar, administrative assistant, lead custodian, counselor, library specialist, and more.

During Salida Del Sol Elementary School’s presentation, teachers took the floor to highlight “the implementation of Playworks and how it has impacted recess with leadership, inclusion, and a decrease in referrals,” as described by clerk Marcos Moore.

Principal Sheila Mendoza further described how the initiative is aimed at addressing students’ post-pandemic needs, and she mentioned conflict resolution as being a component.

“We saw that, after COVID, a lot of our students came back and didn’t have some of those skills on how to resolve conflict and include others at play,” Mendoza noted, adding that – compared to last year – the school is “down 43% in referrals during recess.”

Mendoza then passed the podium onto some of the staff members who are directly involved in the effort before students serving as junior coaches dove into an explanation of Playworks, which is described as a way to “provide safe, healthy, and meaningful play every day.”

With one major component of the junior coaches’ roles being to promote playground inclusion and harness “the power of play,” the students proceeded to demonstrate a game of “switch” at the meeting, which CFO Dale Ponder and board member Jim Colby participated in.

Superintendent’s Report

Superintendent Laurie Doering then took the floor and called attention to various noteworthy highlights from across the district, including 13 Crane Middle School students advancing as finalists in the 2024 National Civics Bee Competition and H.L. Suverkrup Elementary getting involved with the APS Community Tree Program.

Doering also gave a shoutout to the district’s Teacher of the Year semifinalists: Crystal Trueluck of Ronald Reagan Elementary, Jessica Cantu of Salida Del Sol Elementary, Felicia Ebenfelt of Crane Middle School, and Karly Avila of Gary A. Knox Elementary.

Arizona School District Spending Report

Finally, CFO Dale Ponder wrapped up the meeting with a presentation on the Arizona School District Spending Report for the 2023 fiscal year.

“Taking a look at our classroom spending, we are down 1.6% from the prior year in instruction alone,” Ponder highlighted, though 0.9% increases in student and instructional support spending balanced overall classroom spending out to a 0.2% increase from 2022.

Ponder also touched on the matter of average teacher salaries.

“Our increase is growing and the gap that we have between the state is shrinking, so now there’s only a difference of about $1,500 between the statewide teacher average and within our district. From last year to this year, we saw an increase of about $5,400 in the average teacher salary across the district,” he said.

“For the first time in a number of years, our teacher experience index actually grew a little bit,” Ponder continued, noting that the average experience among teachers in the district is 8.8 years.