Please click here for full text

By Nina Vitenson

The present school board is complacent with our schools' scores feeling they are "good enough". However, when we compare to other schools with similar demographics, we're not where we should be.

THREE out of our 9 schools are not meeting that reasonable target, and ONE is in the 800's. Ocean Knoll achieved the dubious "California Distinguished" title only because it FAILED to improve its low targets THREE YEARS IN A ROW, and in fact, has FAILED 4 OUT OF 6 years between 2000 and 2006. Paul Ecke is PRESENTLY under academic review for failing to meet targets. Why aren't ALL schools in the 900 API range?

Many people believe Encinitas has "Blue Ribbon" schools. The truth is that the "Blue Ribbon" award has only been granted to just *ONE* of our schools (Olivenhain Pioneer) only ONCE, back in 2000. The "real story" about our district's scores can be found by going to the California Department of Education's website, which is where I obtained my information. Who will argue with the California State Department of Education?

Encinitas has demographics comparable to many other districts with high property values. Those school districts often have excellent ratings at ALL of their schools. There is no valid reason why Encinitas cannot accomplish the same.

Why don't we compare well? Clearly, the proportion of English learners is not the answer, as those districts have similar demographics. In fact, several schools at districts with higher proportion of English learners than ours have BETTER results than 3 of our schools.

Is it the teachers? No. Encinitas has highly talented teachers facing similar challenges (English learners, GATE/Gifted learners, basic learners, and below basic learners), and high expectations.

We need to better train our teachers to be versatile and prepared to deal with these challenges. Our school board and administration needs members open to innovation, open to new methods and techniques successfully implemented elsewhere. That's the key difference!

We are concerned parents of young children in the district, with a long term commitment to our public schools. We have a different perspective than the multi-termed incumbents, who are teachers endorsed by teachers--and without children in a district they have represented for too many years.

Education is constantly progressing; what has worked in the past will not work for our technology-rich generation of children. Let's put a stop to years of complacency by the incumbent school board.

Please join me, along with Bruce Bishop and Maureen "Mo" Muir. Together we can catapult our school district to new heights. WE CAN DO BETTER.