Community Update

On behalf of the Vista Unified School Board of Trustees and the entire district, I would like to thank Rachel Beld, the members of the Vista Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Judy Ritter, and the members of the City Council for their unwavering leadership and advocacy for our great city this past year.

It is a true honor and a privilege to report to our community that the state of education in Vista Unified is strong.

While we know that everyone was expecting for this school year to be marked with a return to normal, the challenges of the pandemic not only continued but also have increased on many levels.

In spite of the ongoing challenges of the pandemic, Vista Unified continues to serve as the model for educational excellence and innovation. Our staff (teachers, nurses, secretaries, nutritional staff, bus drivers, maintenance, security, administrators, counselors, liaisons, and many others) have responded to the current challenges with courage and resolve. Most importantly, the core of our culture continues to focus on serving the students and families of Vista.

With deep appreciation, we thank every student, parent, and family member for their flexibility, patience, and trust in our team to provide educationally challenging learning environments that are built upon student safety as priority one.

Now, let’s take just a few moments to highlight some of the services Vista Unified has provided to our community this past year and then end with a preview of our work ahead.

Academic achievement is at the core of our work. In response to the needs of our families, we developed an expanded version of our learning models so that parents had the choice of in-person instruction or Vista Virtual learning. Indeed, the scale of the choices were robust. We provided a complete K-12 virtual learning option for any student in the district, including special education and English language development services. We had over 500 students enrolled in the Vista Virtual program. We intend to continue offering this program to families next year as well. Our in-person learning was fully in place from the first day of the school year, with over 19,000 students engaging on 29 campuses across the district. We saw a significant rebound in student achievement after just a few months into the year, with a 6% increase in overall GPA and a 50% decrease in the number of failing grades at the secondary level. We are seeing positive gains in reading and mathematics at the elementary level.

Our amazing and talented students have reengaged with athletics, music, and extracurricular activities. So much so, that many of our schools have already started to win countywide awards. Each of our three high schools have won awards in music, band, and athletics. We have one CIF championship team and another team preparing for a CIF championship match on February 24. Additionally, we have two individual CIF champion athletes so far this year, as well as two CIF state competition qualifiers, and an Avocado League championship title.

We have greatly enhanced districtwide social/emotional support systems to address the trauma that students have experienced as a result of health-related challenges and the damaging effects of isolation due to distance learning. We have provided more than 998 individual and group counseling sessions and more than 368 parent outreach and support meetings. Every elementary school has a full-time school counselor, each middle school has two, and our high schools have four to six counselors. Our school counselors are engaged in a multi-year process to ensure that every student in every school and grade level will have equitable access to instruction and support to meet their individual, developmental, academic and social-emotional needs, as well as a coherent college and career pathway. We have developed an entire training sequence for staff on trauma-informed care. We increased the number of family and community engagement liaisons to 24, and the team is charged with actively supporting parents as partners in education. Equity remains a central commitment for our district, with all staff engaging in implicit bias training this year.

Our focus on safety expanded dramatically this year with the creation of four community hubs for COVID testing and vaccination. This is in addition to the testing and vaccination community hub at the Linda Rhoades Recreation Center location. What is impressive is that at these centers, we have delivered well over 50,000 tests so far this year, with over 7,000 administered during the month of January. Still more, we expanded these centers to also provide vaccinations. To date, we have delivered over 37,000 vaccinations to students, staff, and community members. In addition to that, we have distributed over 10,000 at-home testing kits to families and over 2500 testing kits to staff members. Not stopping there, we have distributed literally tens of thousands of masks to students and staff members. Health and safety remains a central charge for our school district.

As the largest employer in the city, Vista Unified has thousands of staff across our community supporting our students and families. You probably drive by many of them every day. Our Transportation Department has been consistent and reliable, picking up and dropping off 1,151 students daily. Our Child Nutritional Services Department makes over 16,700 meals a day for our students across 29 schools. One cool fact is that they serve over 150,000 pounds of fresh produce annually, provided by local growers in the Farm-to-Table program. Our IT Department has committed more than seven million dollars to continually upgrade technology access for students, installing more than 4,000 computers and devices for students and staff.

One of the most impressive aspects of our school district is our collective resolve to push forward with our facility improvement projects even in the face of overwhelming challenges. Thanks in large part to the leadership of Board Vice President Debbie Morton, we have continued to make great progress with the Measure LL Facility Bond construction projects. Just this year, we have completed four projects and started eight more. Two projects that I would like to highlight today are the new Vista High School classroom buildings, a two story building going in at the front of the campus, and a three story building framing the stadium at the rear of the campus. This $75 million dollar project will remove more than 59 aging portable classrooms and replace them with 44 state of the art science, athletic, ROTC, and general education learning spaces that every student at Vista High will be able to enjoy.

The second project is the new Career and Technical Education complex designed for Rancho Buena Vista High School. This new $13 million dollar facility is multifunded from the Measure LL Bond and a CTE grant written by our CTE Coordinator Robert Crowell. The exciting aspect of this project is that it enables RBV to create two brand new career pathways, construction and welding, that are in huge demand locally, regionally, and globally. Please visit our website to follow our progress on the $247 million dollar bond program.

Looking to the future

Vista Unified continues to set the example for our region. Our focus on equity has been recognized nationally and internationally with invitations to showcase our work at the National Superintendents Association annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee and at the American Educational Research Association international conference held right here in San Diego.

We are poised to expand our early childhood education programs districtwide in the coming months with the expansion of transitional kindergarten (TK) for four year olds. This expansion will be a huge win for our young families because of our extensive partnership with local preschool providers. Most parents will have access to TK and free preschool down to infants and toddlers. Vista Unified has one of the largest early childhood education programs in the county.

We are also using the challenge of the pandemic to rethink our facilities and transportation operations. Specifically, we are shifting all of our schools to MERV 13 air filtration systems that will guard against the spread of COVID-19 and other harmful airborne particulates. We are in the initial process of replacing our diesel bus fleet with electric buses. We have our first six coming to Vista in a few months. One of my favorite projects is our collaboration with the Mayor and City Manager to build a free wifi network for the community. Stay tuned for our community to go wireless.

Vista is also using the challenges of the pandemic as an opportunity to reexamine our strategic plan and actively engage the community in a year-long process for resetting our vision, mission, and values. This strategic planning process is focused on how we may improve our organization so that students are on a pathway that prepares them for a dynamic, ever evolving world of work. The outcome of this process will be a graduate portrait that defines what the community wants to be true for our student graduates as they prepare to move into the world of work as adults. We are also developing adult and system portraits because we know that in order to continue to transform the learning experience for students, we need to transform the way adults set the conditions for student future success. Please visit our website to follow our progress.

On behalf of the Board of Trustees, it is a great honor to provide this brief update on the state of our school district. We have a team of over 3000 employees, each dedicated to keeping the students at the center of our efforts and passions. Our theme this year is The Power of Moments. Every student comes to school every day with unique strengths, talents, and aspirations. It is our task to make every moment count, every day.

Sincerely,

Matt Doyle, Ed.D.

Superintendent of Schools

Vista Unified School District

Email: webmaster@vistausd.org
Website: vistausd.org
Location: 1234 Arcadia Avenue, Vista, CA, USA
Phone: (760) 726-2170
Twitter: @VistaBlueprint