La Mesa‑Spring Valley highlights coaching, districtwide alignment in third year of NCUST partnership

District staff on Tuesday told the La Mesa‑Spring Valley School Board that the district is entering the third year of a three‑year partnership with the National Center for Urban School Transformation (NCUST/ENCAST), and described the work as a systemwide effort to align coaching, curriculum and principal leadership with the district's framework for instruction.

The presentation, described by district staff as "our annual update on our partnership," emphasized NCUST teams' school visits in the partnership's first year, which included classroom observations, stakeholder interviews and written reports for every school site. Those reports, staff said, were used to focus the district on five key areas: professional learning, schedules and routines, teacher collaboration, principal observation and feedback, and communication and celebration.

District staff said the partnership is intentionally aligned with the district's "framework for powerful learning" so NCUST recommendations do not feel like "one more thing" but instead fit into existing instructional priorities. The report notes a push to narrow the district's instructional focus so leaders can go deeper rather than spread efforts thinly across many initiatives.

"This is becoming, I guess, our annual update on our partnership," the district staff member said, explaining the local connection to San Diego State University and why the district chose NCUST for systemwide work.

Principals who participated in the coaching described concrete changes at their sites. Principal Ed Gelotti said the combination of a district coach and an NCUST coach gave him a "thought partner" who helped match classroom tasks to grade‑level standards and prioritize data use to set measurable goals. "One of the things I love about this district is that the leadership here invest in our professional learning so deeply," Gelotti said.

Principal Melinda Pone said NCUST coaching helped her reshape her instructional leadership team (ILT), removing members focused on site operations rather than instructional leadership and reconstituting the ILT around instruction. "We came back with an ILT 2.0 that's even stronger and more committed to the work," she said.

Principal Megan Young said coaching produced visible growth at her school. After an NCUST audit and subsequent coaching, she said the audit findings would read differently this year because of the progress teachers and leaders made. "My growth as an instructional leader has grown exponentially," Young said, describing the value of page‑by‑page review with her coach.

District staff described next steps for the final year of the partnership: emphasize comprehension of informational text, layer powerful vocabulary instruction on top of close reading and text‑dependent questions, expand professional learning on integrated English Language Development, and monitor English Learners' academic and language development more systematically.

Board members asked whether the partnership would end with a final survey or follow‑up visit. District staff said the engagement is intended to create a roadmap for schools rather than function as a simple pre/post assessment; schools are expected to take ongoing ownership of the work, using the NCUST reports as a continuing guide even if NCUST coaches do not remain on site.

The board did not take formal action on the partnership during the meeting; the discussion concluded with staff outlining how coaching and alignment will continue to be woven into principal coaching and site‑level professional learning.