Kayla Piel taught multiple grade levels within the K–8 environment—serving as a Dean of Students, Athletic Director, and Assistant Principal/Athletic Director in other Arizona schools—before taking on her latest role as Circle Cross Ranch Principal. She holds a Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership from Northern Arizona University.
Kayla believes her leadership role includes supporting teachers, students, and families by fostering and encouraging a positive school culture through community relationships. Kayla recently sat down with Dan Gasparino, Manager of Educational Partnerships for Arizona and New Mexico, to share her experience and the results she is seeing through implementing the Caring School Community program.
Measuring Success Year-Over-Year
What was your school community like prior to implementing Caring School Community?
Circle Cross Ranch is a part of the Florence Unified School District, serving students across Florence, San Tan Valley, and Queen Creek, Arizona. This last year was my first as principal at Circle Cross Ranch. I can’t speak directly to the 2023–2024 school year, but that said, our district is a part of a Johns Hopkins research study in which we conduct a culture survey each year that measures four areas. I have received the results of the 2024–2025 culture survey and I’m able to look back on previous years, which is great. For this past year, the results show that school climate, academic climate, social emotional competency, and open classroom climate went up in all areas.
Were there any specific metrics based on the survey that you can share?
The scale runs from zero to five, with five meaning that across the board, everything is perfect. So it’s really hard to reach that five! The school climate from the 2023–2024 year to the 2024–2025 year went from 3.28 to 3.36. The academic climate went from 3.36 to 3.58.
It’s important to note that our students were not surveyed for social-emotional competency; these numbers come from parent, administrator, and teacher data. Social-emotional competency went from 3.44 to 3.56 and open classroom climate went from 2.78 to 2.94. So there was an overall increase in all areas. The school culture survey stakeholders include every parent, every teacher, and every third- through eighth-grade student. Our Parent Teacher Organization parents take it as well.
I understand you’ve been implementing the Caring School Community program for about a year?
Yes, at Circle Cross. I actually had some experience with the program at a previous site.
Staff Reaction and Support
How did your teachers and staff react to this new programming approach?
Initially, it was a mixed bag of emotions. On top of having a new leadership team, it was my first year as a principal of Circle Cross. I had a brand new Assistant Principal, a new Dean, a new instructional coach, and then our district also rolled out a new math curriculum. So for many of our teachers, it was just a lot of learning, including new curriculum and new leadership styles.
And like anything that involves change, there was a little push back in the beginning. I found the implementation assessment to be very helpful. For example, if teachers were unhappy with student behavior or student engagement, we would go into their classrooms and use the implementation assessment. I would walk through the observation tool and then show them the data. They could see the correlation between the results and inadequate Caring School Community implementation.
The implementation assessment was a visual tool to help them understand the connection between their implementation and their class culture not measuring up to expectations. We would do those frequently so they could see the improvement, make the correlation to when they implemented it, and see the positive growth within their class community. There was real, actionable data, all provided by Caring School Community. I didn’t have to reinvent anything.
Communicating With Stakeholders
How did you approach rolling it out to the other stakeholders—your parents and community members?
We informed parents that we would be using it. I know our K–3 teachers were very consistent about including it in their weekly newsletters. But as I look over the principal pack that’s included with the program, I see a lot of things I want to share with parents this next year.
I hate to sound like a broken record, but I became the new principal just last year, replacing the previous principal who served for nine years. Our teachers and our community saw a lot of change with the new leadership team. We don’t want to overwhelm our stakeholders, so we’re taking baby steps. It’s definitely a goal next year to do more community-wide things.
At the same time I’ll add that our primary teachers are so used to communicating—even over-communicating—with parents, that they’ve done a really nice job of taking the program and running with it, and making sure parents are in the loop with what’s going on regarding social-emotional learning. But, we definitely could step it up in the fourth- through sixth-grade category.
Perceptible Changes in Conflict Skills
What are some of the changes that you’ve seen in your students thus far?
Peer communication and conflict skills are so noticeable. I repeatedly hear that these students are able to articulate things that previous year students were not able to do. I think that’s a direct correlation to Caring School Community implementation. Conflict skills have also improved. When we noticed things weren’t always transferring from setting to setting, we made a point to make sure that all of our specialist educators—such as PE teachers or librarians—were in the loop on what students were learning in Caring School Community. They could then reiterate some of those skills. And we’re seeing more of that transfer across settings.
What do your teachers appreciate about the program and how has their approach to classroom management changed?
I think the data results really help. The implementation assessment has been a great tool for teachers to see the correlation. There’s more of a proactive approach versus a reactive approach when they can visualize it themselves.
The leadership team is frequently monitoring our minor incident reports and our referral data trends. We take what we see and share with our teaching teams to help them guide their Caring School Community lessons and what they’re going to do the following week.
Decrease in Incident Reports
The last time we spoke you mentioned data around incident reports. Can you share some of the improvements that you’ve made there?
Yes, this really stands out to me. Previously, I was Dean of Students at San Tan Heights, K–8 and from the 2021–2022 to the 2022–2023 school year we had an amazing partnership with Great Minds.
They gave us everything: We had math manipulatives, a full math curriculum, perfect professional development for ELA, writing, and math. We had everything across the board, everything the teacher could wish for. Teachers never had to spend a moment at the copier. They could annotate in all their teacher curriculum books.
Every kid had a book in their hand. There was no sharing; it was a teacher’s dream. What we found very quickly that first year was we had this amazing curriculum and this great partnership that also included coaching. But what we were lacking was a sense of community.
So the following year, Great Minds approached us. They strongly encouraged us to throw out the SEL curriculum that we were using at the time. They told us we needed to give Collaborative Classroom a shot. The research was done for us and they fully backed it. They encouraged us to do it and even paid for it.
That 2022–2023 school year, our Great Minds coaches provided professional development for Caring School Community, and we implemented it with fidelity across the board. We had every teacher on campus involved—Special education teachers, paraprofessionals, and principals. It was all hands on deck. And it worked.
Comparing my first year without it to my first year with it, there was a huge improvement. When we look at quarter one data without Caring School Community and compare to that following year of using Caring School Community with fidelity along with training, there was a 53 percent decrease in referrals.
We saw a huge shift in the culture at San Tan Heights and I’m excited for this next year here at Circle Cross. There are changes we’ll make along the way. And I think we’ll see a lot of improvement as well.
Student Growth Through Risk-Taking
Did you see any changes with your students in terms of academics?
Yes. As a principal, you always want to see a higher growth rate, and we did. We made progress and our students grew the anticipated amount. One thing we constantly heard from teachers was that it’s so nice that these kids are not afraid to take risks in their learning. They’re answering questions out loud. They’re collaborating with peers outside of their normal friend group. These are things that they weren’t exhibiting in previous years.
Our two kindergarten teachers are amazing. They have both been teaching kindergarten for a decade, and they are constantly raving about Caring School Community and the emotional intelligence the students have developed in such a short time. Like I said, they’re seasoned teachers. And they’re always talking about that improvement and how quickly these students have adapted to a school setting and are learning to articulate their wants and their needs in a respectful manner. That isn’t something you’re always seeing in a kindergarten classroom, so that’s been quite a proud moment.
Now that they’ve seen it in action and the student response, how has your parent community responded to what you’ve built a year later?
Overall, I think there’s great support across the board. I think it’s an easy curriculum to follow. Even substitutes can come in, pick it up, and for the most part, be able to follow along. One thing that I’ve heard from different stakeholders is that it’s actually age appropriate.
Our district has tried different SEL curriculums over the years, and so often there’s one that works really well for K–2,but fifth and sixth graders have no connection to it, or vice versa. And so, it’s been nice to have a curriculum that’s a one-stop shop. I can have a teacher sub in a different grade level or a specialist teacher come and pick up that class for the day if the teacher is running late. Teachers can step into it and follow the lesson easily. And to reiterate, it’s age appropriate, which has been really nice. I also love that it doesn’t just impact the student community. You’re seeing strength in our adult community as well, and you see that across professional learning communities.
Every staff meeting we’re adapting Caring School Community community builders, for instance, those that are in the principal pack.
We’ve modified where needed, to keep the culture consistent with the teachers and the staff and align with what they’re seeing in the classroom.
Final Thoughts for Implementation
What thoughts or insights would you share with another school or another district that might be considering Caring School Community?
As a leader, the fact that it’s easy to follow and is age appropriate is a win for me. It’s not something that’s overly challenging for a teacher to take on. Yes, it takes planning, but it’s not going to suck up all their time.
I appreciate that it’s interactive. I learned very quickly that if you’re entering a classroom and you see a teacher leading Caring School Community time, then it’s not being done right. It’s not top down. It should be very interactive for our students.
One thing I would alert any leader to is the fact that we need to account for those kids that come mid-year. We’ve planned for and account for those kids here at Circle Cross. But I noticed at San Tan Heights when we were doing Caring School Community and had developed this great community, when a new student would join in the middle of the year they just didn’t feel connected.
So if you’re implementing this as a first year, know that you need to account for those kiddos. If you give a little extra to make sure newcomers feel included in the circles and in the community, then it’s going to be great.
Related:
Oregon Spotlight: How Mountain View Elementary Created a Thriving Learning Community
How Sierra Nevada Is Reducing Disciplinary Reports with Caring School Community
Caring School Community, K–8
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