Education

A couple of letters from the school district, regarding the recent arrest of a 16-year-old Davis resident charged with the murders of prominent Davis residents Oliver Northrup and Claudia Maupin, triggered concern from some residents who felt that the messages seemed more geared toward covering the district’s track record, saying “we didn’t do anything wrong” rather than acknowledging potential problems in the district.

One letter that was sent last week to all DJUSD families from Superintendent Winfred Roberson stated, “As you are probably already aware, a Davis teenager was arrested on suspicion of a double homicide that occurred last April.  To some degree, such news affects everyone in our community–students, families and staff members alike.”

A month or so ago, the Vanguard suggested that the school district look into bold and innovative ways to move forward as it embarks on a strategic plan.  The question, of course, is what that bold and innovative path might look like.

From the publication California Economic Summit comes an account of how one community, Sonoma, is working to close their achievement gap.

Current district plans include the extension of a GATE Master Plan with the inclusion of a lottery to select among GATE-identified students, until a new plan can be developed.  The name will change to Alternative Instructional Model program.

The question still remains as to how students will be selected into the program.  Carlton Larson, a professor at the UC Davis School of Law, argues, “When the Board of Trustees of the Davis school district voted to implement a lottery for GATE admissions, it relied heavily on the legal advice provided by the board’s counsel, who contended that the current method of GATE selection exposed the district to the risk of a lawsuit. As several board members suggested, the lottery seemed to be the only legally permissible option.”

This weekend, a Stanford professor of education and sociology wrote a provocative editorial entitled, “No Rich Child Left Behind.”  Except, of course, it was neither provocative nor particularly surprising.

Professor Sean Reardon opens by writing, “Here’s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion.”

While the beginning of the Strategic Plan discussion came from the wrong impetus – the examination of reconfiguration – it nevertheless presents this community with an amazing opportunity.  The reconfiguration discussion was destined to fail from the start – too many in this community felt it was something being forced upon them rather than coming from a place of need.

But, from the ashes of reconfiguration – and let us call it now, reconfiguration is dead for at least a generation – comes the promise of strategic planning.  The challenge that I put forth to the school district is to use this opportunity not to tweak the district around the edges, but to think big.

On Thursday night the school district made the formal decision to pull back on the idea of reconfiguration – moving the ninth grade to Davis High School – and instead embarked on a broader concept of a consultant-driven strategic plan that would guide overall academic planning for the next years.

This would go well beyond reconfiguration, a notion that was floated in January that became a lightning rod of panic for many in the school system.

At tonight’s DJUSD School Board meeting, the board for the first time will receive the staff report on its reconfiguration findings.  As the staff report notes, the discussion is not intended to make a final determination as to whether DJUSD will or should move forward with reconfiguration.

Rather, “It is intended as a preliminary analysis of potential reconfiguration models that staff has reviewed. No final recommendations or decisions for future reconfiguration are proposed in this staff report.”

The Brown Act is at once both scourge and savior in local government.  It is our savior in that it prevents public officials from making their policy decisions behind closed doors and away from the eye of public scrutiny.  We don’t have a gang of three hanging out in the conference room brokering a deal behind closed doors.

At the same time, it can be a scourge.  It means that public entities like the city council or the school board do not have a real chance to float ideas and debate them.  The challenge, then, for public bodies is how does one float ideas, discuss them, and decide whether to go forward without inevitably scaring the populace into believe something untoward is about to go down.

By Gina Daleiden and Tim Taylor

Davis has a long-standing reputation as a community that truly values its children and its schools.  We all want the best educational opportunities for our students, and for them to be safe and thrive at school, now and into the future.  To this end, the Davis Board of Education directed staff to look beyond the status quo to explore multiple options for reconfiguring our school structure to provide academic and programmatic benefits, while generating fiscal efficiencies that could be re-invested in programs for our students across the District.

The direction was to engage school site staff, parents, and community in a meaningful and rational discussion about potential alternative models.  This would allow us to gather necessary information to ultimately evaluate any changes aimed at bringing fiscal and academic benefits. This was a direction to explore and detail a range of options, rather than to evaluate and make final decisions.

Two weeks ago, the Vanguard covered a story in which several members of the Davis community claimed that their names and identifying information were unlawfully misappropriated to purport support for the Davis GATE program.

A petition posted by the group Davis Excel on Change.org states, “We believe that there should be no significant changes to the (GATE) program without a demonstration that the current program is failing its students.”

A new DJUSD Parent Group was formed on Facebook and already has over 200 likes.  The parent who created it explained, “I am a parent in the district (and) my main objective of creating this page is so that we, as parents, can connect (and) communicate directly with each other.”

“I hope we can gain true transparency in the process of educating our kids and rather than rely on rumors or guessing, we can share facts, knowledge, ideas (and)  solutions,” she wrote.

The Davis community continues to weigh in on the issue of GATE, engaging in a spirited and at times contentious debate through letters to the editor and public comment.

Over the past week alone, a number of letters have appeared in the local paper on both sides of the issue.

On Thursday afternoon, the Vanguard received a letter from the Holmes Junior High PTA, stating that they have learned that the Davis Joint Unified School District’s Board of Trustees intends to move the 9th grade to the high school for the 2014-15 academic year.

“Holmes PTA opposes 9th grade reconfiguration at this time and voted at our last board meeting on 2/28 against this change,” the letter read. “We strongly believe that the process is being moved forward without the proper notification to and input from the district’s parents, students, staff and teachers.”