Speakers: Marceline Sciuto and Deidre Walsh from SDUSD
Marceline Sciuto, Executive Director of the Office of Operations - asked to speak about Magnet Schools
Marceline has been in the District for a long time and climbed the ladder from Vice Principal, Principal to her current position.
When she talks with parents about enrolling their child, she suggests they consider the student's interests, academics and specialty programs, and family needs. Although all children can go to their neighborhood school for K-12, there still aren't enough spaces in TK classrooms for all the children who want to attend in their neighborhood.
The goal in offering magnet schools is to decrease minority clustering and close the achievement gap. They are in various categories:
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language emersion - 4 schools & 3 languages
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VAPA - Visual & Performing Arts - 6 schools
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VEEP - Voluntary Enrollment Exchange Program
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IB - International Baccalauréat - 8 schools
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Comprehensive Neighborhood Schools
Transportation is not provided for Choice students. Those with an IEP and those who are foster students or homeless can get free transportation. The State reimburses the cost for home-to-school transportation which has 18 routes now with 4 more coming next year. However, students must qualify and there need to be 25 students on the same route. For instance, Logan Elementary students can get transportation to the Beach community for school. Some choice programs feed into the higher-up school. The District is moving toward online applications for Choice. They get 10,000 applications/year and accept 82%. Enrollment is going down everywhere, so there are slots for choice students.
Discussion
What are the enrollment expectations? Cohort progression is when data trends show how many students stay vs. move. There is a decrease of 1%/year. Once a principal has the expected number of students, he/she can work on their budgets in the Fall for the following school year. The District lost a lot of enrollment with COVID.
There is no home school program in the District. Mt. Everest Academy does it under the CA Dept. of Education. Some charter schools also have a home school program. CA does not check up on home school programs. Many parents find middle and senior high school work is too difficult for home schooling, so the students go back to a regular classroom. An online program is easier.
Deidre Walsh, Director of Charter Schools, dwalsh1@sandi.net
Deidre has been in the District since 2004 working on legal compliance. She has also worked for a County Office of Education in northern CA.
The District has 39 charter schools educating 18,400 students. Charters are independent operators and not really part of SDUSD except they have to petition the District, renew their petition every 2-7 years, and submit to oversight by the District through an annual review. Every year for the annual review, the District visits the school and reviews many forms of records; does interviews with leaders, teachers, board members and parents. The District has denied 4 petitions in the last 5 years. Some charters have multiple schools such as High Tech High which has 7 schools now. Some schools are classroom based while others do more independent study so student attend 2-4 days/week. As a group, they have all grades. They are governed by the CA Education Code which requires 15 items to be completed before they can be approved for a charter petition. Not all the charter schools are approved by the District; the State and Co. Office of Education also oversees some. Their attendance boundary is just the state of CA. All applicants must be given a seat unless there are more applicants than available slots; in that case, there is a lottery but siblings get preference.
The number of charter schools remains steady, but sometimes they merge to make more efficient operations. They are funded by the State. There are pension funds for teachers but they do not get social security. Now there are criteria for the qualifications of their teachers. Asked if some charter schools counsel parents to not apply, Deidre said if they hear of a school doing that, they follow up. Charter schools must provide special ed as needed by their students. However, there are a couple of places that more severe cases can attend. Some charter schools have a high percentage of children with an IEP. Asked if the District inquires why parents move their child to a charter school, Deidre said they ask it, but the District does not reflect on it. There are many reasons.
Albert Einstein School was founded to be bilingual in German/English, but they had to get some teachers from outside the U.S.. Now the teachers have to be credentialed in CA which can take five years plus the cost of living is high, so the school did a material revision and reduced German instruction to 2 days/week.
Asked what controversies exist for charter schools, Deidre said in northern CA, there was negative press because they weren't doing things right which caused enrollment to decrease. Other negatives include COVID and lack of enough special ed. Charter schools are public schools and cannot have a religious affiliation. One committee member recalled when St. Stephens closed as a religious school with classrooms in the church and reopened soon after as a charter school. Deidre has not heard that story.
Next Meeting
The next meeting will be at 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 29. The speakers are Amy Wood, Communications Chair of the PTA and Veri Chavarin, President of the San Diego Unified Council of PTA's.