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Students in seventh through 12th grades at Apache Junction Unified School District will be using a new online curriculum from Savvas Learning Co.
The AJUSD Governing Board voted unanimously at a recent meeting to approve the $187,781.55 purchase of English language arts curriculum from Savvas.
“We originally talked about going out for a seven-12 ELA adoption and that we would adopt the seventh- and eighth-grade book for next year and then the following year is the nine-12,” Dr. Krista Anderson, AJUSD superintendent, said at a recent Governing Board meeting.
“With the monies we have coming in --- the $1.3 million --- we decided to do a full seven-12 going into the next school year, so we’re excited about that piece,” she said.
The $1.3 million is from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, which Congress set up as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act.
An English language arts adoption committee made up of 13 individuals recommended Savvas after reviewing curriculum from it and two other finalists --- Houghton Mifflin and McGraw-Hill.
After using a rubric to compare the three, other questions were asked such as which one would be best with AVID --- Advancement Via Individual Determination, online or that a new teacher could use that matches standards, Candyce Matlosz, adoption committee member, said to the Governing Board.
“For us it came down to cost and Savvas is much more accessible cost-wise than McGraw-Hill,” she said.
For students without Internet access at home, textbooks could be provided, Ms. Matlosz said.
“Most of what is online is also available with the books. We’re not buying the books, but we talked about with the kids that maybe can’t do online or something, there is this resource that’s here and these are interactive notebooks. But we’re not buying these for every kid,” she said.
Dr, Anderson said 10 hard-copy books would be ordered for the school libraries.
“But also they can download the materials onto the computer so that if they don’t have Internet access they can have it on their Chromebook when they get home as well,” she said.
The software has essay scoring for students to get automatic feedback with six traits of writing before being submitted to the teacher and also a plagiarism checker, according to a slideshow presentation made to the Governing Board.
Members of the AJUSD English language arts adoption committee included Courtney Castelhano, Bethany Ligon, Heather DeFrancisco, Theresa Bartholomew, Courtney Moyer, Jerald “Mike” Hopkins, Mary “Angel” Wilson, Dustin Kecta, Ms. Matlosz, Tracy Parris, Lisa Smith, Sandra Keller and Chad Cantrell, according to the slideshow.
“When going through the process, the committee really focused on the state standards and how the different curriculum would align to those standards; looking at the needs of our students and our teachers; really doing some research to figure out were best practices included in the curriculum and did it really serve the content area well so that the instruction would be strong for the students?” Robyn Gonzales, curriculum manager, said to the Governing Board.
“Looked at the instructional materials to see if it matched what we needed as a district, to make sure that it was going to be what’s best for our teachers and our students and align to the standards; and really diving into those materials and working as a committee to really look at what each company has to offer and how they felt would meet the students’ needs and their instructional needs,” she said.
Richard Dyer Managing Editor | East Valley @RHDyer
Richard Dyer has worked at Independent Newsmedia, Inc.. USA, since 1987.
Since 2009, he has worked as a volunteer to design The Blue Guitar Magazine, Blue Guitar Jr. magazine and Unstrung magazine, which are projects of The Arizona Consortium for the Arts; and since 2014, has been overseeing the art submissions.
He also is an artist of welded-steel sculptures, selling his artwork at juried and non-juried art shows
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