It is with great enthusiasm that I welcome back students, teachers, staff, and parents to the new school year. Our leadership team has been hard at work over the summer months making the necessary preparations for a great year. Our theme for this year is “The Power of Moments: Being Our Best for All.” We are focused on setting the conditions so that all students are able to re-engage in their learning pathway, making every moment count. Our team has developed a set of administrative commitments that will galvanize our collective efforts to fill this year with powerful moments for every student in the district.

To make this happen, our school board members have unanimously adopted a $68,000,000 Blueprint for Educational Excellence and Innovation that prioritizes a set of support systems including expanding our Family and Community Engagement team; hiring more counselors and social workers to provide a robust response to social/emotional needs; increasing funding for athletics, music, art, and extracurricular activities; adding 42 new teaching positions to ensure a comprehensive learning support team for struggling students; adding a seventh period to our comprehensive high schools to give students more choice in their schedule; creating a new set of ELD support teachers for English learners; and operationalizing our commitment to equity by implementing a districtwide professional development series focusing on implicit bias, trauma informed care, and restorative practice. All of these areas of expansion will be supported by a robust set of health and safety procedures to ensure that all students and staff are safe and confident in their learning environments.

In the spirit of continuous improvement, we have added a new tool to our communication plan in response to parent requests. We have purchased the Remind app for all schools, teachers, and staff to provide a more efficient, easy-to-use tool to get information, announcements, and schedules to parents and students in a seamless manner. As your superintendent, I will be using the Remind app as well to send along important notifications and updates. All families have already received an email regarding Remind, and this video has more information.

I would like to reiterate a message I have conveyed to our community for the past eighteen months. Our community, state, nation, and world continues to be faced with the lingering challenges of a global pandemic. The impact of this pandemic on our lives, our sense of community, and our ability to reestablish normal routines are real, and they are frustrating for us all. In spite of these challenges, our school district has a dual obligation to fulfill. Our first obligation is to ensure a safe and healthy environment for all students and staff. To this end, we intend to carefully follow all of the requirements outlined in the California Department of Public Health guidelines detailed in the Health and Safety section below. This will likely require us to flexibly adapt to changes in state and local health requirements in response to the fluctuations of the COVID-19 virus. Our second obligation is to ensure that all students have access to a high quality in-person learning environment and grade level standards. In keeping with our commitment to parent choice, we are offering Vista Classic and Vista Virtual learning models. The Vista Virtual learning model has been modified, however, due to the new requirements established by the California Department of Education. Please see a detailed description of the learning models below.

Finally, how we treat each other during these challenging times really matters. As adults, we are setting the example for the children of our city and school district. Our words, and how we use them, will impact our relationships well beyond the end of the current health pandemic. Please join me in practicing our values of trust, respect, collaboration, and equity. We are all in this together.

As a result of our proactive response to getting students back to campus last year, we are poised to have a great year for students. We have refreshed our School Reopening Guidebook for students, parents, and staff to use as the main reference for all of the support systems, rules, and procedures that will be in place for all Vista Unified campuses. Click HERE to access the guidebook. We will also keep the guidebook posted on our website for easy reference. This is meant to be a living document so that we may flexibly adjust and adapt to the changing effects of COVID-19 and state regulations. All administrators and staff will be following this guidebook on a daily basis on campus. The most important part of this new guidebook are the health and safety procedures. As a public school organization, we are compelled to follow the requirements of the California Department of Public Health and the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency. Both of these organizations are united in the revised safety requirements for public schools. The main focus of the new guidance is to prioritize live, in-person learning for all students in elementary, middle, and high schools. All students and staff will be required to wear a mask while indoors, but there will be no social distancing requirements in classrooms. We will continue to have quarantining and contact tracing procedures; however, they have been revised to minimize the negative impact of large groups of students being quarantined. Students and staff will have the option of removing their mask while in outdoor settings. We have developed a revised set of student and staff commitments so that we can ensure that all of our learning environments are safe and secure.

The Vista Unified School District has been continuously committed to providing innovative and flexible learning environments that meet the needs of our diverse student population. In 2021-22, Vista Unified will offer in-person learning at all schools and will offer a modified Vista Virtual model, centralized at Vista Visions Academy. The program has been updated to meet California independent study guidelines under Assembly Bill (AB) 130. Our team has compiled essential information and frequently asked questions to support parents in making an informed decision. For more information, please click on this document, VUSD Learning Model Options for 2021-22.

Parents/guardians who want their child to participate in Vista Virtual in the 2021-22 school year are required to transfer from their current school to the Vista Virtual program at Vista Visions Academy. We have already received more than 200 transfer applications from interested students, and there is still space available in all grade levels.

• If you would like to have your child enroll in Vista Virtual and have not yet completed a transfer, please CLICK HERE to complete the transfer request.

• If you are interested but have additional questions after reading the information linked above, please contact school administrator Damon Patterson at 760-726-2170 ext. 92118 or at damonpatterson@vistausd.org

• If you have questions or would like to modify a transfer request that you have already submitted, please come in, call 760-726-2170 ext. 92180, or email the Student Services Department to get clarification or support with the transfer application process.

Coming off a great start of the Measure LL Facility Bond construction, our team is picking up speed on bond project activity. We just completed the Vista High School Sports Complex, a $6,000,000 project that will provide college-level facilities for student athletes in softball, tennis, field hockey, soccer, track and field, and more. This year, we will see a dramatic increase in the pace of construction through the district. We will be breaking ground on the Vista High School new classroom facilities on September 15, 2021. This project is set to invest over $50,000,000 in replacing all of the aging relocatable classrooms with brand new state-of-the-art science and general education classrooms on the front and back side of the campus. These two new buildings will transform the look and feel of the campus and energize the learning experience for students. We have started the Beaumont Elementary School project that will replace all of the relocatable classrooms with modern learning spaces. We are also planning to build a new multi-purpose room. When complete, Beaumont Elementary will look and feel like a new school. We expect to do the same for Bobier Elementary School by creating a new set of buildings and removing all of the portable classrooms. We will also be investing over $12,000,000 in the design of a stand-alone Career and Technical Education (CTE) Center at Rancho Buena Vista High School. This new CTE Center was identified by Vista residents to be one of the main areas of focus for facility improvement so that students have a direct pathway to expanding career sectors in the local and global economy. Please visit our Measure LL website to follow our progress and watch your tax dollars at work.