On February 28, 2025, Community Foundation for Southern Arizona President & CEO Jenny Flynn, at the invitation of Tucson Values Teachers and Vail School District, participated in their “Principal for a Day” program, and was accompanied by Kelly Pinkerton, Director of Assessment & Innovative Learning for Vail School District. She visited three different learning environments, Civano Community K-8 School, Vail Virtual K-8, and Vail Blended Learning, the latter two of which are located at the Vail Innovation Center.
“I was impressed at the ways the district, schools, and staff have rapidly evolved to meet the needs of parents and students,” said Flynn. “There’s a terrific variety of solutions being embraced, from community-focused Civano that more resembles a ‘traditional’ K-8 school, to Vail Virtual, which caters to students with health issues or unique family circumstances, or a hybrid like Vail Blended with students working on a stage production of The Wizard of Oz on elective day, with rocket experiments in the lesson plan for next week!”
No less impressive was the readily apparent level of investment by the teachers in every pupil. “You could feel such a clear and strong working relationship between each instructor and every single student,” said Flynn. “They exhibited such a connection to where each learner was in their course of study and had very specific individual plans to lead those students to their educational goals.”
Flynn was among more than 20 local business leaders who completed morning “duties” at the schools, who assembled afterwards and discussed how they found so much of what they saw to be genuinely moving, reinforcing their shared belief that innovative K-12 education is critical to ensure a thriving Southern Arizona now and in the future.
The overall experience spoke volumes about the quality of the work that Tucson Values Teachers delivers in supporting educators throughout the region, and Flynn is incredibly grateful for their invitation. For more information, please visit https://tucsonvaluesteachers.org/ and https://www.vailschooldistrict.org/