Lakeview Elementary Principal Tiger Roy told the Lakeside Union School District Board of Education that the site has used Prop 28 funds to provide weekly music instruction for every student and has seen chronic absenteeism fall among English learners from 21% to 12% and overall from 10% to 4%.

Roy said the school’s three goals this year were universal weekly music lessons, reducing chronic absenteeism (especially among English learners) and boosting student performance on state math assessments. “Goal number one, achieved,” Roy said of the music program, adding students now “start off with rhythm sticks” and use boomwhackers and other instruments in regular lessons supported by a Jacobs/visiting music instructor.

Roy described classroom strategies the school has emphasized to improve student outcomes: partnerships with San Diego State University and UC San Diego on math instruction and CGI approaches; structured success criteria in every classroom; use of manipulatives such as base-10 blocks and whiteboard explanations; and an approach to move student verbal reasoning into written explanations using an iterative model based on the Austin’s Butterfly teaching video. He said staff also are working to “turn talk into writing” by giving students staged revision opportunities so brief oral explanations develop into multi-step written explanations.

A short student video shown to the board emphasized bilingual programming and arts exposure: “Welcome to Lakeview Elementary, where we explore, grow, and succeed in a safe and welcoming environment,” one student said in the recording. The principal and staff tied those student experiences to measurable attendance improvements and to targeted classroom practices intended to raise math performance.

Roy said the site has been working on teacher professional learning communities and more frequent coaching visits; he expressed confidence that the combination of these practices would raise the school’s formative math scores. “I am very confident that because of what we have done with this, that we will get our scores from format up to 60 by the end of the year,” Roy said.

Board members did not take action on the site presentation; it was delivered as an informational report during the meeting.