Tonight’s School Board meeting will also be featuring the “State of the District,” by Alameda’s superintendent, I like “State of the Schools” better, but I digress And of course with all the interest surrounding the issue school boundaries, facilities, and educational excellence are on the list of topics for discussion. According to the agenda though, these are the three issues that the Superintendent plans to focus on this school year:
- Changing demographics impacting elementary enrollment and facilities
- Grade 6-12 imbalance in enrollment across the district which inhibits our ability to provide consistent courses of study, programs, and services
- The need for fiscal stability, solvency, and educational equity based on multi-year and long-term planning
Turns out that according to the demographic study the spike on the “East of Park Street” elementary schools will turn out to be a five year jump. Is it enough to consider redrawing district lines? Well we should (hopefully) know by the end of this school year. What I found more interesting than the elementary school issue was that of the secondary and high school imbalance in enrollment. Lincoln Middle School seems to be carrying the brunt of students as compared to Wood and Chipman. If the enrollment levels for the elementary schools hold it will more than likely effect the secondary school level so now is a good time as any to address this issue of which elementary schools feed into which schools or whether boundary lines should shift for the middle and high school level. If it is simply the enrollment level that keeps schools like Chipman and Encinal from getting a wider variety of courses and electives and Alameda High and Lincoln Middle Schools are already over their capacity. Anyone know the actualy capacity of the schools? Mike?
A quick comparison of the Alameda High and Encinal High websites show that Encinal doesn’t have the staff (or have not designated a web savvy kid) to update their website on a regular basis. In trying to compare the types of courses offered between Alameda and Encinal, I discovered that Encinal didn’t offer a course catalogue on their website. But if the list of school clubs is any indication of how much more is offered at Alameda, then Encinal students are really getting the short end of the stick, Alameda High students have almost twice the number of clubs available to join then Encinal High students. Including such clubs that I wish had been at my high school: Submit to Knit and Robotics. What I did learn was that Alameda High School still offers wood shop and auto shop classes, so for those community members out there worried that our schools are no longer offering technical classes, there you go.
The goals set by the superintendent are very ambitious, but that is what we should expect of our administration particularly since we do task them with taking care of our most precious commodity: our children. And I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, even if you don’t have a child in Alameda schools, or your child has already outgrown the public school system, you still should be concerned with the type of education Alameda children are getting, I know this is going to sound trite but they will eventually be the leaders of this community, so we really want to make sure that they are getting the finest education public schools can provide from Bay Farm elementary all the way to Ruby Bridges — I’m pretty sure that Ruby Bridges is the western most elementary school…although it might be Paden.
I’ve been enjoying not posting, but feel compelled this a.m.. I will try to verify exactly what is involved in various clubs.
Our freshman is involved in a newly forming debating group which had both another freshman from Lincoln and a continuing junior who each advocated for it on their own. They got a history teacher to sponsor it.
Forgive constant reference to my teacher spouse, but she is my conduit for information. She started a Close Up program (student trip to D.C.) at Encinal when she started teaching, but I believe it folded when she moved to Alameda High where another teacher has been organizing Close Up for several years. So, I think in class education and clubs indicate different things.
Encinal has about 800 kids while Alameda has several hundred more. Our senior makes friends quickly and knows many kids from both schools. He goes to Alameda but his Encinal friends indicate that one thing they like about the place is that it is less “clicky” and various groups ( Jocks, geeks, emo kids, etc.) intermingle and cross associate more at Encinal. It is smaller, and maybe the difference in socioeconomics has something to do with that too. Socioeconomics may be a factor in clubs as well, don’t you think?
When our senior came out of Wood it was with a great crop of kids, most of whom go to Encinal. The other child is friends with a number of kids who just finished Lincoln last year and who also seem to have done well, but the rap on Lincoln for years prior from many parents has been that the place is too big and kids too status conscious. That may have changed or be inaccurate. I leave it to a recent Lincoln parent or teacher to verify.
Comment by Mark I — September 25, 2007 @ 8:12 am
Lauren:
One of challenges of identifying “capacity” is that it depends on whose definition you are using. There are state reports that use one defintion while facilities planners use another and the site will have a third definition. One of the preliminary drafts of the demographic report presented “capacity data by site”. It was removed after staff realized they needed to further examine what “capacity” really means. One of the meetings in the next future months regarding faciliites will resolve this issue with a staff preentation on the “capacity” of each school.
http://mikemcmahon.info/Demographic07a.pdf March 17 version page 50
Comment by Mike McMahon — September 25, 2007 @ 4:17 pm
Clubs at AHS are whatever kids can convince a teacher to give up his/her room for one day a week at lunch. They are entirely student run; the school only provides the facilities. The teacher sponsors are on their own time at lunch. Also, the list on the AHS Web site is last year’s list– they change from year to year, depending on what students want to organize.
Comment by Kevis Brownson — September 25, 2007 @ 11:16 pm
Lauren:
I did some digging and found a copy the 2005 AUSD Facilities Master Plan document. The capacity numbers from that document are here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pJ8KOZqvjhEyAfRc13_3qDQ
As you can see the State uses a different loading factors for elementary schools (does not assume Class Size Reduction is implemented).
It should be noted that a lot has happened since that document was published in Spring 2005. So the District is doing a new capacity study to determine how new portables, room redesignations and facility closures/consoldations have impacted district capacity.
Comment by Mike McMahon — September 28, 2007 @ 1:39 pm
Just for the archives, here is an update to link for elementary school capacity from the task force.
http://mikemcmahon.info/TaskForceWorkshop1212.pdf#page=44
Comment by Mike McMahon — December 23, 2007 @ 12:51 pm