School Board Awards Ceremony — November 29, 2022

All right. Good evening, everybody. Welcome. Welcome this evening to our student and staff appreciation evening. My name is Maurice Iarion. I'm the proud superintendent of the Rollins Unified School District. Today, you'll see me grimacing only because I made the mistake over Thanksgiving break pretending I was in my 20s again playing basketball. So my lower back is just killing me. So anyway, I will probably... Yeah, yeah, you worked me over. Anyway, we're very proud to be here tonight. We're excited to recognize a lot of our wonderful students and staff tonight. And in a few seconds, I'll turn it over to Board President Jim O'Neill. And then from there, Jim will turn it over to our presenters tonight. But hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. Hope everyone's having a great school year as we end the calendar year. I just want to say to the students in the room here, Thank you for all the hard work and dedication and many hours that you've put forth into your learning, into your athletics, into your extracurricular activities, and just being good people and setting an example for all of community of how we can work together as a team and how we support each other, celebrate each other, and lift each other up. So thank you for all your dedication. And to the parents that are in the audience, thank you for all the time and effort you put forth, not only to your own children, but probably your children's friends and your neighbors who live all around you. And for all the extra time and effort you're putting forth in supporting the Redlands Unified School District. I know it hasn't been the easiest of times as we've gone through the pandemic and now back into in-person instruction. But without all of you and without our students and, of course, our marvelous staff that you see some of here tonight, we wouldn't have been able to proceed as we have. So thank you for all that you do for the district and for the community. And having said that, it is my honor to introduce Mr. Jim O'Neill, who is the president of the Board of Education, and he will lead us into the next portion of our presentation tonight. Mr. O'Neill.

well thank you very much an honor to be here tonight week as president of the board i can speak on behalf of the board that's one of my roles as president of the board so uh... tonight my colleagues could not uh... beer for various reasons although they are here in spirit uh... because they made sure that uh... i would represent them and uh... make sure that you know that how much they appreciate an honor what's happening here tonight Pretty amazing what we are able to do in terms of success with your students. First, I want to acknowledge. Students, you have a village behind you. Probably they're sitting next to you, part of your village. People who love you, people who take care of you, people who support you. And you need to appreciate them, certainly, and I know you do. But you wouldn't be here tonight if you weren't doing some exemplary things. And for that, we wanted to spend a special time, set it aside. put quiet the noise from our board meetings and focus on just amazing accomplishments by our students and that's what this evening is about so thank you for coming tonight to receive that recognition and certainly as uh... as board members we're not the operational people we know that all of these people are here tonight along with your teachers and staff members and administrators throughout the district, are working very hard to help you attain success. And that makes us extremely proud, not only of your actions and your successes, but the success of the people who support you and help you. So tonight, we're going to really recognize some outstanding individual students for some amazing accomplishments, reviewing some of them, and it was just like, it was just awestruck. And so our board members also received copies of all of the information and all of the students tonight, and we're streaming. So if there are people that weren't able to come tonight, grandpas, grandmas, relatives, friends, other family members. It's going to be posted on our website. Is that right, Mr. Arellano? Yes, it is. So you can watch it again and again and again. You can take your phones and take pictures of the video coming off of the streaming. So share it with your friends and celebrate. That's what this is about, is a celebration. So, without further ado, I would like to introduce our athletic director who takes care of so much of the sports programs. If you think about our district, there is so much going on, Doug Mukasey.

Thank you. It's my pleasure tonight to present our four outstanding athletes from each high school, and that's been a tradition that we've had for quite some time in this district. Each school picks a star outstanding athlete for each season of sport. It's not a selection I make. It's the school that really takes ownership in that, and we have some outstanding recipients tonight. So it's quite an accomplishment considering that each high school has hundreds of students compete in each season of sport. So tonight, from Orange Wood High School, we have Alicia Zaragoza. Alicia, come on up. Alicia was a two sport athlete this fall at Orangewood. She played softball and volleyball for the Dragons. And she started most games in softball. Her coach was highly complimentary of her play at multiple positions. She played first base and left field. And a major significant event was when she hit two home runs in one game, which helped them get to the semi-finals. Her teachers were very complimentary about her great attendance. And Coach Perkins, who coaches her in both sports, said that, you know, she really displays outstanding attitude, hard work, and really took on a leadership role within both teams, and it had a lot to do with the success this year at Orangewood with both volleyball and softball. So, congratulations again, appreciate it. And if everyone, and once you receive your plaque, if you could just stay up here. okay next uh... redlands east valley has selected emmanuel wallace is a real standing fall student athlete man up manual has uh... has been quite famous in the last few weeks in the press uh... for some of the statistics on the read off here so he was the uh... He was the CBL champion for boys cross country and he placed first at all three CBL meets this year as a junior. So that's an outstanding accomplishment. He also took first place at the CIF prelims for Division III, and he was 11th place this last week at the CIF state finals. Again, outstanding accomplishments here. He was the team captain as well, three-year varsity letterman. Both coaches, both head coaches in that program, Coach Andreas especially, was very complimentary about just how much he pushes the other student athletes and really gets them to strive and do their best. So, again, outstanding effort and he also has great attendance. So, congratulations Emmanuel. He also mentioned how much he's looking forward to running at the new track at REV this spring. Okay, Citrus Valley High School has selected Brock Liam as their Fall Outstanding Student Athlete. Come on up, Brock. And Brock, for those who have been to CV football games, you've seen Brock play multiple positions. Tight end, safety, kick returner. He was a team captain, and last year he played quite a bit of quarterback, and actually won a lot of games for the Blackhawks. Had to fill in for a spot there. This year, he had statistics that were amazing. 18 total touchdowns, 52 receptions, seven hundred eighty receiving yards he led the team also in interceptions and this is one of the reasons he's being recruited right now by several division one football program so the Blackhawks had a lot of success this year in the regular season they won eight and two and they made it to the quarterfinals of the Division II CIF playoffs. So Coach Bruick, who's coached a lot of great players over the years, said that Brock just exemplifies what it means to be a true student athlete. And that's evidenced by, again, his scholarship opportunities and the 4.2 GPA. So again, outstanding job, Brock. And stay tuned because you'll be seeing him play on Saturdays very soon. Okay. Redlands High School has selected Isabella Farroki as their outstanding fall student-athlete. She played on probably the most successful team we had, one of the most successful teams we had this year in fall sports, the RHS girls volleyball team. They went undefeated in the CBL, outstanding accomplishment being 10-0. Isabella ranked seventh in the state among Liberos, and she also had amazing statistics. She was first team all-CBL. She led RHS in digs and receptions, and with the digs, she was actually 24th in the entire CIF. That includes all sections. Coach Flowers talked extensively about her hard work, positive attitude, stellar defense, and just what a well-rounded student she is. She's involved in a lot of community service and is number one in the class right now at RHS with a 4.82 GPA. So, again, Isabella, you'll hear her name announced for other awards too. Congratulations. And if each school's administrative representative can come on up for the group photo.

Can you please stand?

Okay, and now we will have Deepika Sarvastava come on up, and she's one of our coordinators in ed services. She'll be presenting our next set of awards.

Good evening, everyone. Tonight we will celebrate RUSD students and staff who have won awards in competitive events in school year 22-23. Before we get started, I would like to share a video we created to highlight the summer STEM academies that we had RUSD offered earlier this year.

Hi, I'm Ken Wagner, Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services in the Redlands Unified School District. In 2018, Redlands Unified School District introduced a multi-year vision called RUSD 2025 Excellence for All Students. One of the five tenets of RUSD 2025 is enhanced learning through innovation. As a way to meet this goal, the district has partnered with the University of California Riverside and the University of California Davis to create a STEM pathway which exposes RUSD students to pre-college programs that focus on science, technology, engineering, and math.

This year we organized four summer STEM academies. Middle School Robotics, High School Engineering, and High School Artificial Intelligence were organized in collaboration with the University of California Riverside and took place on the UCR campus. The fourth Middle School C-STEM Academy was held in collaboration with the University of California Davis and took place at Clement Middle School. Students completed 40 hours of curriculum that was developed by the faculty of UC Riverside and UC Davis. The instruction was delivered by UCR graduate students under the supervision of UCR faculty from Barnes College of Engineering. Around 200 Relevance Unified students successfully completed these summer STEM academies.

I coach students for both the middle and high school engineering academies at UCR. The most important aspect of the RUSD STEM academies was that they took an integrated approach to raising students' awareness of STEM educational and career opportunities. They convinced students that a STEM-oriented college education is actually feasible.

Hi, I'm Mia, and I'm a freshman at Citrus Valley High School. I joined the high school engineering academy because I wanted to explore different STEM programs. I was specifically interested in engineering and robotics. During the academy, I assembled a car using motors and a battery, and then I learned how to code to make the car move in a straight line or spin in circles. It could also trace a track, identify an obstacle, and turn around.

This is my second year working with students and UCR faculty to support the high school engineering program. The STEM Academy show that RUSD has a strong community of diverse students who have a passion for robotics and coding. Students are excited by the notion of being a part of a college community. This was evident from how they responded to the freedom they had during lunch and the interest they showed on the campus tour.

Hi, my name is Jason and I am a junior at Redlands High School. I attended a summer STEM Academy where I learned about artificial intelligent models and how to train them. As a capstone project we train on a model for traffic sign detection, which could be a major application in future autonomous driving systems.

Hi, I'm Dhruvika and I'm a sixth grader at Koch Middle School. I joined the C-STEM Academy because I was interested in coding and robotics. In the Academy, I learned how to code and build robots. I've really had fun being able to bring alive my own idea of a robot by connecting link box and being able to program them using C-STEM block coding.

The Middle School Seastem Academy was a wonderful opportunity for students from across the district to come together to collaborate and create innovative STEM projects as a team. The students were actively engaged in activities which provided opportunity for productive struggle. They learned how to examine problems and then create a plan to solve them. Some of these students had no prior experience with coding or robotics, so it was great to see how much the students were able to grow and learn each day.

Thank you, Christine, and our team for putting together this amazing video.

Sorry.

Next, we will recognize students who won the Mission 16 student space flight experiment program research project, the effect of microgravity on weevils found in rice proposed by Kedip Medjek-Kristanski, Kedit Captain Nunez, Kedit 1st Lieutenant Degga Risar, and Kedit Sergeant Martinez from Redland High School under the guidance of teacher Ione Barness Joshua and Mr. Paul Devoe from Redland High School were selected for Student Spaceflight Experiment Program Mission 16 to International Space Station that was launched using SpaceX Dragon CRS-26 on November 26, 2022. The experiment will return to Earth after six months for student retrieval and analysis. This experiment is one of the 22 nationwide experiments selected for Mission 16 by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education. I would like to invite Principal Van Leeuwen, Teacher Ione Joshua-Barner, Cadet Major Krestanskiy, Cadet Captain Nunez, Cadet First Lieutenant Degrassar, and Cadet Sergeant Martinez.

Thanks.

All right, let's make the family members stand up. One more picture. That family member stands up, and we can recognize you as well.

I just want to add that the Space Dragon docked onto the International Space Station yesterday, and these students will be, and we will have a control experiment on Earth that will be conducted at Redlands High School tomorrow. So it's a great experience for all of our students who are participating in this, and a proud moment for Redlands Unified. We will also recognize the patches that were created by RUSD students Haley Collinsworth and Mia Khaliva under the guidance of teacher advisor Amanda Betts from Citrus Valley High School to fly with our experiment. I would like to invite administrator from CV and teacher Amanda Betts to congratulate the team. Can I have Haley Collinsworth and Mia Khaliva from Citrus Valley High School. Instead, I will invite Director of Secondary Education, Julie Swan, to be here on behalf of the Citrus administrator. And finally, the National Merit Scholarship Program is an academic scholarship competition for recognition of National Merit Scholarship Corporation. It recognizes National Merit Scholarship semi-finalists. These are highest-scoring students in each state and represent the top 0.5% of the state's senior students, as determined by their performance on PSAT that they take in the junior year. This year, we have four RUSD students who have been selected as Merit's scholarship semifinalist. I would like to invite Principal Kate Van Leeuwen and the Director of Secondary Education Julie Swan to congratulate the winners. The first, we have Daniel Lin from Citrus Valley High School. Isabella Faruqi from Redlands High School. Neha Vijay from Redlands High School. And Varun Shrivastava from Redlands High School.

All right, one, two, three. Come on, don't be shy. Come on.

Thank you, everyone. And next we have our coordinator, Dublin Clinton, who will be recognizing students for their academic achievement.

Hey, good evening, everyone. I'm kind of situated here. Okay. First of all, I just want to welcome you to this portion of our awards ceremony. I'll be presenting the fall student awards for students for our district. So tonight what we want to do is we want to recognize some special achievements that our students have done. We want to recognize some students who have done some tremendous things with advanced placement testing and Smarter Balanced state testing. So because we had so many amazing things, there's so many amazing, wonderful things that students have done, and we have such a large number of students, just to be cognizant of time and everything, we wanted to make sure that we honored all of our students. for each category, but because of the large number of students that we have for each special recognition, and plus also timing, spacing, we created a slide deck that will display each student's name and their respective school. So as we're showing, and we're showing our love and our appreciation for our students and for their accomplishments, for each slide deck, if you would just participate with me, because I'm one of those people, I like an active participant crowd. If you could just clap along with me and just kind of show that appreciation and that love and just really honor. We really want to do a great job of honoring our students and for what they've accomplished with these particular testings. Because these are very rigorous tests that these students that they prepare for and then they actually go through the school year. What we'll do first is we'll talk about the advanced placement students and testing. So the first category we'll look at is we're going to look at, we're going to be recognizing on each slide the scholars with honors students. And these are the students who receive an average score of at least 3.25 on all their AP exams that are taken. And they also receive a score of three or higher on four or more exams. Four or more exams. And that's over the course of their academic career in high school. So this is a great achievement to be able to score at least a three, 2.5 on all those exams to have that actual average. Okay, so our first recipients that we're going to display are students from Citrus Valley High School. So if you can give them a round of applause, please. Awesome. And we have our recipients for this recognition from Redlands East Valley High School. If you can give them a round of applause. All right. All right. All right. Nice. OK. Redlands High School. Let's give them a round of applause. which is group A. And then here's our second group.

We have group B.

Awesome job, Rollins High School. OK, our next category is AP Scholar with Distinction. And this is granted to students who received an average score of at least a 3.5 on all their AP exams taken. And scores are three or higher on five or more AP exams. OK? All right. So first up, again, Citrus Valley High School, if we could give them a round of applause. Those students. Amazing job. Redlands East Valley High School. Redlands High School, Group A. Got a trigger finger there. All right, amazing. And let's give applause for Group B. And we have one recipient from Redlands E Academy, if we can give them some love. Show them some love. Thank you. All right. Okay, the next assessment that we want to recognize is SBAC achievement, also known as the Smarter Balance Assessment Test. So before COVID, each year, each students who were in grades three through eight and in grades 11 were assessed with the Smarter Balance Test to measure what they learn and their understanding of grade level standards, okay? Last year was actually our first year of the SBAC test being fully reinstated for all students in grades three through eight and grades through 11. Tonight we want to acknowledge those students who received a perfect score. in either English language arts or in mathematics, and also recognize those students who scored perfect scores in both subject areas. Okay? The SBAC is a very rigorous test, so to achieve a perfect score on this test is, on any section of this test, is quite an accomplishment and we want to just make sure that we recognize those students for doing this. And for all the students who are presented up on the slide decks, we have certificates that were specially made for those students. We've sent those out to the sites so that the sites can have an opportunity to celebrate their achievements also too. So the certificates were sent out this week, so students should be receiving them sometime this week or early next week. Okay? All right. All right. So we're going to look at, first, students who got perfect scores in English language arts or in mathematics. So we'll go through each school. Our recipients for a Royal Verde, give them a round of applause for ELA. Bryn Mawr, we have some recipients for ELA and mathematics. Perfect scores. Crafton Hill, Crafton, if we could give them a round of applause. Cram Elementary School, ELA, round of applause. Franklin Elementary School, ELA, round of applause. Jetson and Brown, ELA, round of applause. Kimberly, students with ELA, perfect scores, round of applause. Mariposa, two sets for ELA and for mathematics achievement. Mentone for mathematics. Mission for English Language Arts. Smiley English Language Arts are recipients for English Language Arts. E Academy slash RISE. ELA in math. Beatty ELA are ELA recipients. And then Beatty, our math recipients. Clement, our ELA recipients. And Clement, math, our recipients. Cope, our ELA recipients for Perfect Perfect. And Cope Middle School for mathematics achievement. More for ELA Achievement. And more for Mathematics Achievement. Citrus Valley High School for English Language Arts and Mathematics Achievement. Round of applause. All right. OK. Redlands East Valley High School, students with perfect scores in English language arts and mathematics. Redlands High School for ELA, give them a round of applause. Redlands High School for mathematics, perfect scores. And now finally we get to last but certainly not least, we have a special recognition for students who have scored a perfect score on both English language arts and mathematics. So for them to achieve a perfect score on both subject areas, that's a tremendous accomplishment. Tonight we have five students who are earning this recognition. So we did ask if the principals can attend and parents and the students, if they were able to attend this ceremony. So if you're in the audience, please, when you're announced, just come up and a special plaque has been made for you, as you know. And if the principal and the families would like to come up, that'd be great to share in this special moment as I announce our perfect perfects, okay? All right. So let's start with first from Cope Middle School, Alexander Volk. All right. OK. Citrus Valley High School, Logan Lazarini. From Redlands East Valley High School, Bill Wang. Perfect, perfect. From Redlands High School, Owen Walker. And from Redlands E-Academy, we have Daniel Satavara. Sorry. All right. Satavara. All right.

Got it. Thank you. Did they tell you that I have to take a DMV driver?

All right. Well, if there's someone here who isn't impressed, there's something wrong with you. Just an amazing group of young people here today, tonight. And I get emotional when I see this kind of exemplary accomplishments by our young people. And I want to congratulate again every one of them. For those that were here and those that weren't here, again, hearty congratulations on behalf of the school board and on behalf of all the staff that you see that are here to celebrate as well. Thank you for coming tonight, staff members and parents and family members and students. Wow, keep up the great work. I know you will. In fact, the people with you today probably won't let you do any other, but keep that up, right? But I know how much hard work that takes. I have a son, and he was a successful student, not as successful as the success that you're having. Oh shoot, he's going to see this, isn't he? He might see this. Sorry, son. He took both of us to keep him going strong, but you know what? In the end, it all pays dividends. And the successes that you're having now will carry you on through life. Keep making the right decisions. You're doing fantastic. We're very, very proud of you. We're honored to have you in our school district. And I know that your teachers are honored to have you in their classrooms. And to principals, honored to have you in their schools. and sometimes it's hard peer pressure you know i i i i see that i get that school administrator for many years but uh... you know in the end you have to do what's right for you and you're doing it right now congratulations thank you so much for coming this evening we are very very proud uh... of your accomplishments and keep it up and have a wonderful wonderful holiday when it comes Still work to be done, right? Finals and all the rest of that coming up. So it's not party time yet. So thanks again. I think there's some snacks, some little snacks back there, cookies and things that you can spoil your dinner with. And have a wonderful evening. Be careful going out. And good night.