With the recent release of the Academic Performance Index scores for the Morgan Hill Unified School District, parents and community advocates have taken it upon themselves to see what they can do to help improve the scores. However, the superintendent is doubtful that one organization is actually looking to improve the schools.
A small group of parents have connected with an organization called People Acting in Community Together (PACT), a community-organizing group that has a history of starting charter schools not connected with the town’s school district to give more options to parents, such as Rocketship. PACT’s website says that “they focus on helping individuals make improvements in their community.”
PACT was founded in 1985, and in 2000, it began organizing with parents in East San Jose, and worked with the Alum Rock Union Elementary School District on obtaining approval for opening three new charter schools, unaffiliated with the current public school system.
PACT held its first meeting in Morgan Hill with mostly Spanish-speaking parents at St. Catherine’s Catholic Church earlier this week, where these parents are parishioners. The next meeting is scheduled for Monday at 8:30 a.m.
“A lot of parents are still learning about what API means, what the scores mean and how it affects their schools,” said Lupe Cazares, PACT coordinator for Morgan Hill. “We’re still in the early phases of gathering information and exploring what we can do to help.”
MHUSD Superintendent Wes Smith, who attended the meeting along with Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services, Norma Martinez-Palmer, does not believe that the goal of PACT is to actually help existing Morgan Hill schools.
“We always want to be there for parents, especially when they want to improve schools. At the meeting, we come to find out from members of PACT, that their real intent is to bring a charter school to Morgan Hill,” said Smith. The intentions of PACT came to his attention after the meeting, Smith said.
“I believe the parents were there to talk about ways to improve the schools when, all along, the leadership of this group (PACT) had a different design. I feel bad when people are manipulated in that way.”
The California Department of Education released the 2011-2012 API scores last month. Overall, the district is up nine points from last year with a score of 789. However, several schools still fall below the state benchmark of 800.
Elementary schools Nordstrom, P.A. Walsh and Martin Murphy made healthy gains of 34, 22 and 35 points, respectively. Nordstrom continues a three-year improvement trend and is the second school after the Charter School of Morgan Hill to breach the 900 API milestone. Smith said that Charter School is a great model for how a charter can be done, with support and coordination from the town’s public school district, as it’s done with MHUSD.
Schools that saw drops in scores this year include Barrett Elementary (23), El Toro (10), Jackson (13), Paradise Valley (19), San Martin/Gwinn (5) and Live Oak (13).
Barrett has shown a decreasing trend in the last four years, sliding by 44 points since 2008.
Five of eight elementary schools are labeled as “Program Improvement” schools, which is based on the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Smith and several board trustees have said the expectations of NCLB are impossible to meet.
When a school goes into PI, parents can legally request to have their student attend a different school. Currently Los Paseos, Paradise Valley and Nordstrom are the only elementary schools that are not in Program Improvement. The district itself is in year three out of five years, which in the fifth year it’s required that the school reorganize either in staffing, curriculum or be closed.
The scores were a major topic of discussion at the most recent MHUSD board meeting, held on Oct. 23.
Armando Benavides, a lawyer and Morgan Hill resident, addressed the board about the achievement gap in Morgan Hill Unified schools. Across MHUSD, students labeled “Hispanic/Latino” achieved an API score of 714, compared with students labeled “White,” which achieved an API score of 855. Students labeled “Socioeconomically Disadvantaged” came in with a score of 698 for 2011-2012.
“I challenge the board. You have the authority and responsibility to oversee our district to ensure that we get genuine upward movement in the percentage of students that have scores at or above proficient,” Benavides said during the meeting. “The board should challenge the district to demonstrate that its programming and instructions will make a difference. That is the task that you have.”
After the scores were released, Superintendent Smith said that the district doesn’t “put a whole lot of weight in any one year. We look statistically for trends over time and make analysis based on those trends.”
“It’s one test that really doesn’t give us as much information as the public thinks it does,” he said. “There are many other things we have to look at.”
Also, after the scores were released, a group identified as “MHUSD Parents United” created an online petition, challenging MHUSD to “develop and implement a solid student achievement plan with benchmarks and accountability.”
So far, 17 people have signed the petition.
