Good leadership is often associated with the ability to react to an emergency quickly and effectively. Dr. Cain Jagodzinski faced his first huge challenge as the Fountain Hills Unified School District Superintendent last week when a broken water main shut down two district buildings, but he and others feel it was handled as well as possible.

The water main broke over the weekend, and staff noticed the break on Sunday, Oct. 2. The high school campus and district office were closed for the whole week, and staff were shuffled around to the elementary and middle school buildings. The high school students used online resources to communicate with their teachers and complete assignments.

“Everyone I’ve talked to, we’re all still energized on what we’re trying to accomplish,” Jagodzinski said. “With this current situation, we worked really hard to communicate with everyone involved and made sure they felt supported. We sent letters to the community. I did a zoom question and answer for all the high school parents that wanted to attend with [Fountain Hills High School Principal] Chris Hartmann. We had a handful of parents show up and just wanted to hear more about what was happening.”

Benchmarks

High school students were supposed to take a benchmark test last week as an end to the first quarter of the school year. Jagodzinski is a data-driven leader, and he wants to use benchmark data to track and better prepare students for their end-of-year state assessments.

Middle school students still took their first quarter benchmark exams, and high school students will take theirs next week after October break. The benchmarks are important to Jagodzinski because the state of Arizona has changed its standardized tests three times in three years, which did not leave much viable data for educators and administrators to track growth.

The state of Arizona did not change tests going into this school year, so Jagodzinski and other administrators can use data from those tests to prepare for upcoming tests. Third, sixth, seventh and eighth grades take the AASA test, and only high school juniors are required to take the ACT as a standardized test. Fountain Hills High School also required freshmen to take the ACT Aspire test for data, which is similar in effect to the Practice SAT exam.

“Now we’ll have the same test two years in a row, and we’ll be able to see where we made strides and where we still need to make strides,” Jagodzinski said. “We do benchmarks every quarter, we then get the data from the benchmarks and that tells us real closely, who’s where they need to be, who’s not, and then you start using time throughout the day and possibly after school, and even on Saturday, to get kids where they need to be.”

When Jagodzinski was the principal at Fountain Hills High School, he installed a volunteer Saturday school that allowed kids to have extra access to teachers. The first Saturday catchup class for high schoolers will be at the end of October and then on a monthly basis moving forward. Jagodzinski is working with Dr. Kimberly Weeldreyer at the middle school to get a similar Saturday school up and running on that campus.

“We’re not teaching to the tests, we’re teaching the standards,” Jagodzinski said. “The standards should be closely aligned to these tests, so it should work hand in hand. The key to higher test scores, I believe, is the intervention of coming back and doing the reteach model and reteach is back at the high school.”

Extracurriculars

Jagodzinski wants Fountain Hills to have success inside and outside the classroom, and he’s excited for ongoing and upcoming projects at the high school. He is revitalizing the high school’s athletics Hall of Fame and will invite several new inductees to the hoopcoming game during the basketball season this winter.

One of Jagodzinski’s goal as principal was to make sure every student participated in a club or sport. He said the high school participation rate is very high this year, but not 100%. Jagodzinski and athletic director Evelyn Wynn are working together with Paul Perreault from the Rotary Club so that every team and club has an assignment for Make a Difference Day on Saturday, Oct. 22, and they’re also working to have options for students not involved with a group already.

One of the areas that Jagodzinski wants to continue building on is the music programs. Fountain Hills hired an elementary school music teacher and high school band teacher after the start of the semester, but Jagodzinski wants to hire more and see a return to Fountain Hills’ music prowess.

The Falcon marching band is only a few years removed from its 2018 state championship led by music directors Lynn Truby and James Morales. The husband-and-wife duo left Fountain Hills, but Morales returned to the high school this year.

“I can see immediately his impact on the band,” Jagodzinski said. “The way they sound, and just the fun they’re having again, which is such a big part of the social aspect of student life at Fountain Hills High School. The band, it’s a big part of it. Some years, we had 60, almost 70 kids in the band in a school of 500, so that’s a big number.”

Enrollment is up so far this year from projections and Jagodzinski is trying to keep everything from test scores to behavior moving in a positive direction at FHUSD. Fountain Hills High School was one of the highest performing public high schools in the state under Jagodzinski as principal, and his goal is to raise the standards so all three FHUSD schools are at the top of the state.