Beyond the Blackboard

Capistrano Releases Potential Trustee District Maps

Many, many sentences in the reports stress these are only a starting point, but the Capistrano Unified School District has posted maps of potential new voting areas for the district's seven trustees.

The five scenarios look at trustee areas that mirror high-school attendance areas, elementary attendance areas, city boundaries and other criteria.

They also identify whether they'll create an open seat up for grabs in the next election, or pit two existing trustees against each other.

The work was required because of the 2010 Census, which shows 343,291 people in the CUSD boundaries, 17 percent Hispanic.

And remember, with the passage of Measure H, voters will only cast ballots for one trustee -- the one from their area.

The public hearings on this kick off Monday night.

Here's the maps:

Download CUSD District Maps

Here is the district news release:

Public Hearing, Board Discussion Scheduled for Monday, Dec. 12

 

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO—Capistrano Unified School District has released preliminary drafts of adjusted trustee area boundaries, which will be reviewed and discussed at the Board of Trustees’ meeting on Monday, Dec. 12.

            The five drafts, drawn by National Demographics Corporation, are considered a starting point that will stimulate discussion, ideas, and direction for the consultant to develop a final plan for approval. The maps can be found at http://bit.ly/uALe24 (pdf).

            The trustee area boundary adjustment is a process that occurs once every decade after data from the U.S. Census is updated. In addition, voters approved Measure H in November 2010 that changed the method of electing members of the Board to a “by trustee area” election process. This requires Board members to live in a particular Trustee area, and be elected by voters living within that area. The election scheduled for Nov. 6, 2012, will utilize the new method of election.

            While the drafts have been drawn using criteria approved by the Board of Trustees at its Nov. 14 meeting, the plans are not final or exclusive. Considerable revision is likely and different parts of the plans can be melded into one final proposal.

Plan A boundaries are drawn using the least amount of change and are relatively compact; Plan B relies heavily on city borders; Plan C is drawn taking into account elementary school attendance areas; Plan D is based on high school attendance area boundaries; and Plan E is drawn using city boundaries and high school attendance areas as guidelines.

The plans will be brought back to public meetings for review and discussion on Jan. 9 and Jan. 25, 2012. The final plans are scheduled to be adopted at a Board of Trustees’ meeting on either Jan. 25 or Feb. 13, 2012.

Members of the public who wish to provide feedback on the draft plans can attend one of the meetings, send their input to [email protected], or mail comments to the Capistrano Unified School District Board of Trustees, 33122 Valle Road, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675.

Brown Vetoes Bill that Would have Altered API

Governor Jerry Brown is apparently no fan of standardized testing. He railed against the idea of teaching to the tests and the weight put on scores on Tuesday in Irvine, I'm told.

Here's a report on that.

But earlier he vetoed a bill that would amended the Academic Performance Index. His reason: Adding another speedometer to a broken car doesn't fix it, he said.

Here's more:

A sign hung in Albert Einstein’s office read “Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.”

SB547 nowhere mentions good character or love of learning. It does allude to student excitement and creativity, but does not take these qualities seriously because they can’t be placed in a data stream. Lost in the bill’s turgid mandates is any recognition that quality is fundamentally different from quantity.

There are other ways to improve our schools — to indeed focus on quality. What about a system that relies on locally convened panels to visit schools, observe teachers, interview students, and examine student work? Such a system wouldn’t produce an API number, but it could improve the quality of our schools.

See the entire post here.

Here's another link to a story on the issue, from EdSource

Mandarin Headed to Capistrano Unified

This mostly from Capistrano Unified School District after Monday's meeting:

Capistrano Unified School District trustees on Monday approved a Mandarin Chinese immersion program, the first in an Orange County public school system and one of about 80 nationwide.

The program should be in place in the South Orange County school district by the 2012-2013 school year.

“A challenging economic environment is no excuse for not being able to offer new and innovative educational programs requested by our community,” Board Clerk John M. Alpay said in a statement. “There is intense demand for this language, and in an era of school choice and competition, our ability to offer this program to our families reaffirms this District’s status as an innovative provider of quality education.”

Alpay, a corporate attorney who represents San Clemente, suggested and pushed for the program.

While English is the language spoken by academics, businesspeople, aviators, and other global professionals and is the world’s third most popular language, Mandarin is the world’s most spoken language with more than 1 billion speakers, the district said. The program has proven to be welcomed by parents countywide, with 165 families having committed their students to attend the program. 

“The third pillar of the District’s strategic plan is academic achievement and enrichment. Adding this program fits right into the vision for helping student become successful in both college and career,” Trustee Anna Bryson said. “Allowing students this intense language focus will ensure that they are bilingual and biliterate when they graduate, which gives them an advantage over many of their peers who will not have this opportunity.”

Students who choose to attend the program would begin in kindergarten or first grade with 80 percent of instruction taking place in Mandarin. The program will be phased in with kindergarten, and, if feasible, first grade. The program will be placed at an existing school site, and utilize the same open enrollment policies currently in place for the district’s successful Spanish two-way immersion programs.

The Capistrano Unified School District serves 53,000 students in a 195-square-mile area of South Orange County. For more information on the Mandarin immersion program, please contact Amy Bryant, director of curriculum and instructional support, at 949.234.9254.

Read more: The Capistrano Dispatch - Capistrano Trustees Approve Mandarin Chinese Immersion Program 

District Attorney Says No Brown Action Violations at Capo Unified, but Calls Atmosphere 'Toxic'

The District Attorney's Office has issued a report that clears Capistrano Unified School District is innocent of any Brown Act violations during the saga of restoring some of the cuts made to teachers' contracts last year.

The DA earlier issued a report saying there was a violation, but Capistrano Unified officials protested, and the DA's Office agreed to reconsider. This time, after interviewing all of the trustees, the DA says some things might have looked like violations of the state's public meeting law, but actually weren't.

The 26-page report painstakingly, and in some cases painfully, goes over the meetings, discussions and debates leading up to the restoration, through the public meeting held after the restoration to reaffirm the decision.

The report says two trustees -- presumably Ellen Addonizio and Sue Palazzo -- complained to the DA about the potential Brown Act violations, as did a resident. That would have been Jim Reardon, who sued the district over the issue but ultimately dropped it when the case was gutted by a judge.

While saying there were no violations, the DA doesn't go so far as to say all is well in CUSD. The report notes trustees could still use additional Brown Act training, and that closed sessions should be recorded.

And then there's this:

"The Superintendent feared that a public discussion of the restoration of hte furlough days and pay cuts would potentially intimidate the new Board into reneging on the contract, resulting more labor strife. There was a desire to avoid such contention and to restore calm in the wake of last year's labor dispute and the charged political atmosphere of the recall.

"While such feelings are certainly understandable, it bears noting that democracy, with limited exception, does not contemplate elected officials making decisions behind closed doors to avoid public paritcipation with its potential for loud opposition. It may be natural human nature to wish to avoid such unpleasantness, but democratically elected governments demand public officials of sterner stuff."

It gets stronger on page 25:

"The OCDA's investigation also revealed what can be described as a seemingly toxic atmosphere within the halls of CUSD. Evidence revealed examples of condescension or disdain for other Board  members or dissenting members of the public. Meaninful discussion was replaced by facetious motions and political theater. Accusations and recriminations were repeatedly recounted. The motivations of colleagues and others were questioned or impugned. While mutual recriminations and concerns for contractional obligations, professional positions, political agendas, and labor peace were expressed, one was left with the impression that the very object of the entire organization, the education of the community's children, had been allowed to fade into the background. The public has a right to expect that those charged with educating their children lay aside their personal animosities and agendas to focus on the true purpose of the positions they occupy.

The report goes on to talk about trustees who didn't want their statement taped, who wouldn't be interviewed in front of CUSD attorneys, etc.

Here's the entire report:

Download Final DA Letter on CUSD

Meeting Examines the Role of the Federal Government in Education

The Capistrano Bay League of Women Votes will hold its second in a series of sessions on the "The Role of the Federal Government in Education"on Wednesday.

The group will hear about the national common core standards and their assessments.

League member and high school teacher Cristina Leon will be the speaker.

The group meets from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Dana Point Library, 33841 Niguel Road in Dana Point. The meeting is open to the public.

See the group's website for more information.

A Look at the History of Capistrano's Schools

Jan is a columnist for us in The Capistrano Dispatch and penned this piece.

JAN SIEGEL: A Moment in Time

Capistrano Schools, through the Years

The city is still celebrating 50 years of incorporation. As school starts it is a good opportunity to look back on the San Juan Capistrano School District and see how it started, and where it is today.

The earliest records of a school system in this area date from 1854. Don Juan Avila and Don Juan Forster served on that first school board. The first San Juan Capistrano School District covered a very large area. It served 193 school age children from what is now lower Los Angeles County to San Diego and from the ocean to parts of Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Only 27 of the school age children were close enough to attend school.

The first school was a one room adobe building. There were no books. Rustic tables were used for desks. The State code had set the school year for three months. Total cost for running the school for the year was $60.

The first teacher was T.J. Scully, who was a highly educated person. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and as a young man immigrated to Canada where he received his teacher’s certificate at the Toronto Normal School. Because of the erratic school year, he was able to teach in both the newly formed Santa Ana School District from 1855 to 1859 and the San Juan District. According to Pam Gibson, in her book, Two Hundred Years In San Juan Capistrano, Sully was paid $100.00 for three months of teaching. In 1855 when Santa Ana’s school opened his pay was reduced to $75.00 because he was also teaching in Santa Ana. In 1860, he became clerk of the Santa Ana School Board, married and settled for the rest of his life in Santa Ana.

Teachers were hard to find in those early years and most of them were also poorly trained. Teachers were mostly men, and few of them had little interest in teaching as a career. School years were flexible in duration, lasting as long the money lasted.

In 1860, the first County Board of Examiners was formed, predecessor to the Board of Education. Examination of the teacher and issuance of a certificate before he or she was accepted to teach became standard practice. As recounted in the May 25,1961 Coastline newspaper, in 1863, the first county teachers’ institute was held. “From this point on, teachers took more of an interest in their profession, learned from each other’s experiences and profited from expert guidance and encouragement.”

The first purchase of a piece of land for the specific use of a school was in San Juan Capistrano in 1867. The land value was assessed at $14. The school year was now four months long, but there was still no division of grades. The attendance had risen to 47 students and the cost for the year was now $331.96.

California state textbooks were introduced in 1871. For the first time in the history of the school system, a uniform code of education was established in the state.

The school year was now six months long and 56 students were enrolled in the Capistrano School District.

 

With the formation of Orange County in 1889 other school districts were being formed in the new county. By 1900 most schools recognized separate grades. Very few of the districts, including San Juan Capistrano had high schools. The ninth grade usually finished the education of students. If children went on to high school they had to go to Santa Ana.

Most children went to work, but a few were accepted in normal schools. The students took the county exams for graduation from ninth grade. “If they passed, the graduating exercises were the high point of their lives.”

 

In 1919 the Capistrano Union High School District was founded. Pam Gibson recorded that “the first trustees were C.E. Crumnine, J. S. Landell, Guy Williams, C. Russell Cook and Mae Forster. Sixteen students were housed in a temporary building which opened September 13, 1920. John S. Malcolm was principal. The curriculum included English, Latin 1, mathematics, Spanish, history and athletics. The first graduates in 1923 were Lucana Forster Isch and Marian Barnes.”

The San Juan Elementary school building was built in 1910. At that time the district had 125 children within its boundaries and 101 were enrolled in the school. “An average daily attendance of 61 students was maintained.” The school year was now 178 1/2 days and the property was valued at $4,250.

Today the school year is 180 days. The district population is 53,000 students. The 2010 budget was $429.2 million dollars. There are now 34 elementary schools in the district, two K-8 schools, 10 middle schools and six high schools, two exceptional needs schools, 1 independent study and 1 alternative school.

As schools open take a Moment In Time to reflect on the history of education in San Juan Capistrano, realize how much we have grown, and how fortunate we are to still have the site of the first school in Orange County on El Camino Real.

Jan Siegel is a member of the Cultural Heritage Commission whose name appears on the city’s Wall of Recognition.