As Sobrato Principal Rich Knapp presented a report from the
committee he heads, the Education Specifications, or Ed Specs,
during Monday’s School Board meeting, two members of the committee
told trustees they were dissatisfied with the report and with the
experience of serving on the committee.
As Sobrato Principal Rich Knapp presented a report from the committee he heads, the Education Specifications, or Ed Specs, during Monday’s School Board meeting, two members of the committee told trustees they were dissatisfied with the report and with the experience of serving on the committee.
The committee was charged with creating guiding principles for the secondary schools, criteria for evaluating student achievement and school success and a list of suggestions for addressing the guiding principles.
Much of the discussion by trustees, four of whom were served with notices of recall at the beginning of the meeting, revolved around test scores and other data related to student success and failure. Targeted for recall were the four longer-tenured board members: Tom Kinoshita, Jan Masuda, Del Foster and George Panos.
The data under discussion also included SAT college entrance exam statistics. Trustees were concerned that only 29 percent of high school students took the SAT, which Knapp said was “well below the state and county average.””
Over the past two years, according to district data the percentage of students that took the exam was less than both the state and national averages.
Failure rates among Live Oak students is another concern. According to the district, Hispanic students failed one or more classes at twice the rate of white students.
Graduation rates provided some good news and some bad news for trustees. Although in 2002, Live Oak ranked eighth out of 11 similar schools, the graduation rate has increased from 87 percent in 1994/1995 to 94 percent in 2001/2002.
Another positive note is that API, or Academic Performance Index, scores have increased, particularly among the subgroups. In 2003, the Hispanic subgroup increased its score by 36 points to a score of 572, and the socio-economically disadvantaged subgroup score increased by 43 points to 547. Live Oak met its school-wide goal for the first time in three years this spring.
“There were a lot of things that frustrated me about this committee,” committee member and parent Elizabeth Mandel said Monday night. “We asked, in the beginning, ‘Where’s the data?’ … But we could not address the data until the end … It (the process) appeared to be constructed to insure that this work would never be completed. The committee was designed apparently to further a pre-existing agenda.”
The purpose of the committee, according to Knapp, was to come up with educational guidelines to ease the transition from a 10-12 high school configuration to a 9-12 high school configuration with the projected opening of Sobrato High in August 2004.
Formed in May, the committee met seven times. It was composed of representatives from the community, parents and the School District.
“Our original charge was to develop a 9-12 configuration for new high school; our report to you tonight will only present guiding principles,” committee member and parent Valerie Hickey told trustees Monday night.
Hickey, wife of board member Mike Hickey, also told trustees she was disappointed with the placement of the report on the meeting agenda.
“It did not warrant being called a discussion item or even an information,” she said. “Yet its very existence on the agenda will later be used as board endorsement … There is a feeling among the community that these committees are being used to advance predetermined paths.”
Knapp told trustees he had made a mistake by not presenting the data first, but he also said the specific details of the 9-12 configuration should be determined by the staffs of both schools.
“If I had to do it all over again, I would start by looking at the data first,” he said. “But at no time was this committee empowered to set up what the structure of the secondary schools would be. The staff at the schools need to have the buy-in. We did look at research as we began, two state Department of Education publications, secondary school publications and a Stanford University publication. Members were invited to bring in other documents.
“We did go out to the community, 12 times,” Knapp said. “We had a meeting in Spanish, we went to Martin Murphy and to Britton. The mission statement came out of the community forums … No modification was suggested.”
Live Oak Principal Nancy Serigstad, another administrator on the committee along with Britton Principal Jim McDonald, said the guiding principals formed by the committee “are not prescriptive, they are guidelines.”
Foster, who is in his second term on the board, said he thinks the data is an important part of the focus of the committee.
“I am disappointed that you didn’t start off with the data,” he said Monday. “I am well aware of the performance data coming out of Live Oak High. It is well-drilled into me. It has been a very influential part of my decision making. I’m well aware we are not hitting on all cylinders here. I am really frustrated about that …Whenever we start any committee, you start with data.”
Foster asked Knapp what Live Oak ranks among similar schools when it comes to dropout rates. Knapp said Live Oak ranks “11 out of similar schools, the highest rate in the county.”
Trustee Panos asked the dropout percentage.
“It’s 2.6, but that isn’t a real number because of the way it is reported,” Knapp said. “If you look at freshmen that enter (Live Oak), it runs about 18 percent, and well over 60 percent of that number are Hispanic, probably closer to 70 percent.”
Knapp reported to the board at an earlier meeting that 34 percent of Live Oak graduates qualify to enter a UC school, and 17 percent of them elect to attend.
“We have a couple of things going against us,” Knapp said Monday. “We don’t have time for teachers to get together and talk about this in detail, nor do we have time to talk about best practices and what is successful.
“Among those 11 schools, all except one, had time built into their schedules each week for that … I believe it is not small learning communities, it is not the configuration of our classes, but what takes place in our classes. If they (teachers) don’t have time to work on that, (the data will not change).
Board President Kinoshita said this is an emotional issue for him and said he remembered when he was a junior in high school 40 years ago.
“There was a private secret club, and the non-club members were mostly Latino,” he said. “I survived and did okay in chemistry because of my own circumstances. I got some tutoring at home …
“Forty years later, we have 66 percent of our students disengaged. There is something wrong and we have to fix it. You can’t complain about change and reform unless you have an alternative. “Kids today don’t have that family stability,” he said. “It’s our responsibility to provide that for them as educators.”
Trustee Hickey said he could appreciate what Kinoshita said, but he also recalled the keynote speaker from the California School Boards Association (CSBA) meeting that five of the trustees recently attended.
“His message was all about families,” Hickey said. “With any new program, any new curriculum, it was all about families. I don’t believe that we can say we cannot engage the families.”
Hickey also said he thought one of the main reasons the district is building Sobrato High is to address this problem, with smaller schools.
“I thought we just spent $80 million on a new high school to solve this problem,” he said. “Why do we add this and this and this on top of the $80 million? Shouldn’t the direction be we’re adding small classes? We don1t have any more money (to spend on new programs).”
Foster said trustees need to take a more active role in planning for the two high schools. “We as a board need to make clear what our goal is for the high schools,” he said. “This should be brought back as a part of our goal-setting discussions.”
The board had planned a retreat-style meeting for a Saturday earlier in the month, but it was canceled because the CSBA representative who was scheduled to attend could not make it. It will be rescheduled, probably in January.
Trustee Shelle Thomas said it would not be appropriate for the board to discuss planning for the high schools only during a retreat.
“This is something the community needs to be involved in,” she said. “I want this to be something this is out in front of us all the time. We’ve turned people off by an appearance of secrecy. I don’t want it done at a special board retreat. I want it done where we have full access to the community.”
