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Littleton Elementary District reviews 2023—24 monitoring report, highlights enrollment loss, staffing and safety gains
Summary
The Littleton Elementary District governing board received a monitoring report covering six guiding principles, which flagged that roughly one-third of resident K—1 students attend schools outside the district, noted high teacher retention amid hiring challenges, described safety and social-worker expansions, and previewed a minor renumbering of Policy BA on first reading.
The Littleton Elementary District (4278) governing board on Tuesday received the district's 2023—24 monitoring report, which district leaders said shows progress on student achievement and operations while flagging enrollment and funding pressures.
"Our latest count is about one-third of the K—1 students in the Littleton boundaries are attending somewhere other than Littleton," Superintendent Dr. Freeman told the board as he opened the presentation, attributing the trend to vouchers, charter growth and broader post-pandemic shifts. He said the district will use 2023—24 data to inform goals for 2024—25 and beyond.
The report reorganized prior material into six guiding principles. Presenters summarized results across chapters: Chapter 1 (achievement) showed an overall 83% success rate on two prioritized goals and a district GPA increase from 3.0 to 3.15; Chapter 2 (safety) highlighted wider use of bus surveillance and a Department of Justice grant that improved server and video capacity; Chapter 3 (families) documented reductions in chronic absenteeism at individual schools and expanded ParentVUE functionality; Chapters 4 and 6 emphasized staff retention and financial alignment.
"Special education was underfunded by a quarter of $1,000,000,000," Dr. Freeman said, citing a pre-pandemic study and warning that inflation has likely increased the shortfall. He also said the district faces a continued shortage of teacher candidates (roughly 5% of positions remain open districtwide) even as it reported a 91% teacher retention rate for the prior year, a figure Mr. French said is about 13% higher than the national average.
District staff credited federal ESSER funds with supporting programs and easing transitions; they also recounted operational issues in opening Lake and Prep Academy, including an electrical equipment change that required rework and coordination with the local utility to secure final inspections and cooling systems.
On safety and student supports, presenters said the district deployed bus surveillance with audio, Zonar routing and ID badges, a crisis alert system (Brivo), vape-detector pilots and seven social workers funded through local and grant resources. Dr. Haid reported social workers made roughly 500 more contacts than the prior year and screened students three times annually using the SABERS tool; 202 students were classified as high risk and were contacted at each screening period.
Family-engagement work included a steady rise in ParentVUE portal use and new portal features such as attendance reporting, contact updates and transportation requests. A board member raised a vendor-driven change that made a mass-email function visible in ParentVUE while teachers reported not receiving those emails; Ms. Garrison said the data team identified the change and the district will investigate and report back.
On staff development, Mr. French highlighted a "grow your own" pipeline (26% enrollment growth year over year in the program) and two campuses recognized as model Professional Learning Community schools. The monitoring report also summarized the district's fiscal picture: the management team said 56% of district spending went to direct instruction in the most recent Arizona Auditor General dataset and grouped instruction and student support account for 72% of spending when combined.
Administrators noted an earlier maintenance and operations override election that permitted the district to exceed a state budget cap by 15%, a measure district leaders said was critical to preserving programs and compensation levels.
On policy, staff presented a first reading of Policy BA (board operational goals) that would reorder and rename items to align current terminology (for example, updating the phrase "college and career standards" to "academic standards"). Staff described the change as organizational and said no substantive goal content would change; the item will return on consent at the November meeting.
The board asked several clarification questions about year-to-year assessment comparability; presenters cautioned that test-platform changes (paper versus online) and state-level scoring shifts can limit direct comparisons and said they would bring peer-comparison context at a future meeting.
A motion to adjourn passed by voice vote at 7:03 p.m., ending the meeting.
