Nesbitt School highlights IB validation, solutionary projects and student-led environmental work

Nesbitt School Principal Ryan Hansen told the Board of Trustees that Nesbitt — a kindergarten-through-eighth campus — enrolls just under 600 students and is implementing the Belmont‑Redwood Shores strategic plan through an International Baccalaureate (IB) middle‑years program and a district-backed “solutionary” teaching and learning framework.

The presentation explained how the IB program and a new solutionary curriculum are intended to combine academic standards with student-driven projects. “Nesbitt is a very diverse school with just under 600 students,” said Ryan Hansen, principal of Nesbitt School. Hansen and staff credited the school’s IB work with creating new curricular expectations (for example, 50 hours of art and design, and three years of Spanish language acquisition for middle-school students) and with prompting teachers across all grades to redesign at least one literacy unit around community problems.

Nut graf: School leaders told the board the IB validation visit recently concluded and that the school has already implemented many IB elements this year. Staff said the solutionary model — which uses grants of roughly $3,000 per grade-level team to support project work — has yielded student projects such as composting teams, food‑waste tallies with the district food service vendor and community-oriented campaigns launched by upper-grade student teams.

Details: IB coordinator and middle‑school science specialist Kastewood (identified in the presentation as the IB coordinator) gave an update on the validation process, saying teachers had prepared dozens of subject-group overviews and unit plans and that the team had posted extensive documentation for review. The school reported conducting 27 trainings, preparing 25 year‑at‑a‑glance subject documents and writing 82 unit plans; staff said they were “about 52% the way there” toward full documentation at the time of the meeting and were awaiting the final validation letter.

Teacher Katie Marsh described fourth‑grade solutionary work on environmental waste, which included student research, class projects and an environmental fair. “This project made me realize that young children can and do have the ability and the power to change their environment,” Marsh said. Marsh and other teachers described student actions such as food pickups with a local nonprofit and classroom compost teams.

A seventh‑grade student, Theo Carabales, described classroom and IB activities and said the program encourages creativity, cultural study in language classes and real‑world problem solving: “Being an IB student in Nesbitt really gives me an opportunity to be creative and design my own things,” he told the board.

Board members and administrators discussed outreach and recruitment for incoming fifth graders (feeder school visits, shadow days and family information sessions) and noted parents sometimes have preconceptions about middle‑school assignment patterns. Staff said they are expanding parent-facing demonstrations and “instructional rounds” so families can see classroom practices directly.

Ending: Presenters asked trustees to encourage further community outreach so families know about Nesbitt’s IB and solutionary options and to support continued time and resources for teachers to pilot and refine the projects. Staff said they would notify the board if the district received the IB validation letter.