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Gilbert Public Schools to partner with Legacy Sports USA on Performance Academy

Tom Blodgett
Posted 6/8/22

Gilbert Public Schools will partner with Legacy Sports USA starting in the 2022-23 school year to provide athletic training in the district’s multisport enrichment program known as the Performance …

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Gilbert Public Schools to partner with Legacy Sports USA on Performance Academy

Posted
Tom Blodgett
Gilbert Public Schools will partner with Legacy Sports USA starting in the 2022-23 school year to provide athletic training in the district’s multisport enrichment program known as the Performance Academy.

Under the Performance Academy model, the enrolled students, who are in the fourth through eighth grades, will attend GPS classes in the morning, then be bused out to Legacy’s Bell Bank Park facility for training and educational support.

Families will pay a $50 extracurricular activity fee quarterly to participate.

The GPS governing board unanimously approved the fee and Legacy as the program vendor as a consent agenda item during the board’s June 7 meeting.

“I feel what is being proposed tonight is well beyond anything comparable to our surrounding school districts,” GPS Strategic Initiatives Director Jared Ryan said. “I think we’ve taken some steps with some strategic planning that separate us from what some others maybe set out to do previously.”

The district offers the Performance Academy on the campus of Mesquite Elementary School, but beginning with the 2022-23 school year, seventh and eighth grade students in the academy will attend South Valley Junior High School for their morning classes, Elementary Education Executive Director Jason Martin said.

Students will then be bused just after noon from Mesquite Elementary and South Valley Junior High to Bell Bank Park, where they will receive training in their sport and have some academic support time.

Transportation is the only cost to the district, Ryan said.

Currently, students are bused from Mesquite to a variety of different locations for afternoon training, a situation that has grown more difficult with increased transportation challenges schools are facing, Martin said. That was one reason the district started looking at using a single vendor.

Martin said more than 100 potential vendors were notified of the opportunity to participate in the district’s request for proposal process, and five submitted proposals. A district committee developed a rubric for scoring the proposals, and Legacy scored the highest. Martin said one aspect of that was Legacy’s proposed cost per student was much lower than others.

Furthermore, having a single vendor as a district partner allows families to use Arizona tax credit money to pay fees.

Students in the Performance Academy start their day earlier than traditional students on campus, but they do have access to elective class subjects, such as music or Spanish, and they can participate in after-school extracurricular activities and junior high sports.

As part of the agreement, Legacy is designating GPS as its sole educational provider, and Dawn Antestenis, GPS’s marketing and communications director, said that allows for numerous marketing opportunities for the district, including email blasts and making use of Bell Bank Park’s digital signage and having banners at the park.

The Performance Academy also works with students who are doing additional training in performance arts, but those students will not go to Bell Bank Park. Those students already enrolled in the academy receive transportation to the location they go to for practice, Antestenis said.

New performing arts students as well as any students who choose to go to a different athletics facility will provide their own transportation to wherever they attend for performing arts, Antestenis said.

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