Lee Means Fine Arts Academy principal Melissa Almaraz presented the campus report, showing assessment growth and describing the campus’s arts and academic enrichment offerings.

Almaraz said Lee Means is tracking strong beginning‑to‑mid‑year progress on district i‑Ready measures and that multiple grade-level cohorts are in the “high performance, high growth” quadrant on the school’s internal dashboards. She credited teachers, instructional coaches and a campus “A team” for targeted instruction, interventions and the campus’s enrichment schedule.

The report detailed the campus’s arts focus and the elementary speech, drama and debate program, which Almaraz said is unique in the valley and fields students from first through fifth grade in middle‑ and high‑school–level competitions; the campus reported students have placed in tournaments against older competitors. Almaraz described the Moana Jr. production as a months‑long effort involving rehearsals, staging and parent support and said these extracurricular and enrichment activities are intentionally used to build confidence, communication skills and teamwork.

Teachers and parents in a short video segment explained the program’s value: a student said speech “has helped me express myself in so many different ways,” and parents described the value of early public-speaking instruction for language, diction and future readiness.

Board members praised the campus culture, noted the principal’s emphasis on both data and student experiences, and asked staff to continue sharing replicable practices districtwide.

Ending: Almaraz and her leadership team will continue to monitor assessment growth, share lessons from Lee Means’s enrichment and arts strategies with district leaders and prepare end‑of‑year data to support planning for next year’s instruction and programming.