Continuation schools close in some rural districts
Photo by Henrico Prins
As school districts across California struggle with budget cuts, some districts are cutting back on small schools known as continuation schools that accept been a mainstay of high school instruction for more than than half a century.
Continuation schools are intended to help students who are struggling academically to stay in school and graduate, but haven't succeeded in a regular high schoolhouse setting. But specially in rural areas some school districts are having a difficult time sustaining them.
According to state figures on Ed-Data.org, in the autumn of 2010, the latest twelvemonth for which figures are available, there were 497 California continuation high schools — 28 fewer than the 525 that existed two years earlier.
In rural areas surrounding Chico, school districts serving a relatively pocket-size number of struggling or declining students are finding continuation schools prohibitively expensive.
In some areas, districts have airtight the schools outright and moved students into 1 or 2 classrooms on the regular high school campus, said Joe Stits, an didactics consultant and secretary of the California Continuation Educational activity Association.
"Kids who were not successful at a traditional loftier school are being placed back on the traditional school campus with very express options," said Stits. He worries that sending students back to a campus where they recently may take had difficulties with security staff or administrators won't help keep them in school.
Continuation schools offer minor classes, with an average pupil-to-teacher ratio of xx to one, and back up services to assistance students gear up for technical careers or college. Created after World War I to provide flexible hours to teens needing to piece of work part-time to help support their families, in California, continuation programs have get a "cornerstone of the land's drop-out prevention strategy," a 2008 Stanford/San Diego State/WestEd study plant.
Off-white View Loftier, the continuation school run by the Chico Unified Schoolhouse District, has been able to sustain a comprehensive continuation programme in role past bolstering its enrollment by arresting students from neighboring districts where continuation schools have been eliminated. Each student brings with him or her state funding, based on a school'south "boilerplate daily omnipresence."
Officials at some smaller schoolhouse districts in the areas surrounding Chico say they can't justify the programs financially. In 2010, Durham Unified, located in a small farming community southward of Chico, closed its Mission Loftier continuation school, which served merely iv to eight students at a time. Last June, in Colusa County, the 390 student Maxwell Unified School District closed its Enid Prine High continuation schoolhouse, which had been serving only four to six students at any in one case.
In Orland, west of Chico, the schoolhouse district reduced the number of students admitted to the continuation high school from 60 to xl after losing one of 3 faculty positions.
Administrators in Durham, Maxwell and Orland all said their continuation programs had been cut or eliminated to save money at a time when massive upkeep cuts were necessary.
Enid Prine High, for case, was ready for 10 students but only had iv to vi during its last academic year. The school allowed students to work at their ain step to consummate courses and recover lost credits.
The school was costing the commune roughly $120,000 per yr to operate, Superintendent Ron Turner said. In 2009 the state gave districts flexibility to use funds that previously had to be spent on continuation schools on whatsoever educational purpose, equally role of a broad move to give local districts more flexibility over state funds. The continuation school funding went right into Maxwell Unified's general fund. Past spending the funds on the regular school program, Turner said, "we tin can provide services to more kids." But at a cost — the closure of the district's continuation schoolhouse "is an unfortunate office of the times," he said.
Turner said the district yet offers students opportunities to take hold of up. Some students who had attended the now-closed continuation school are trying to brand up credits by taking "independent study" online courses offered by Brigham Immature Academy. The courses, Turner said, can be quite challenging.
But if the online courses duplicate ones offered past the district, the students seeking to make up lost credits must pay for the courses themselves. Although they are "reasonably priced," said Turner, that can nonetheless present a hardship. To remove additional obstacles, the district allows students to use on-campus computers to do the work.
To aid students who may have enrolled in the continuation program if it all the same existed, Maxwell Unified offers an after-school tutorial plan four days a week.
Other continuation schools are cutting hours. In the Folsom-Cordova Unified Schoolhouse District about Sacramento, Folsom Lake Continuation High School's program was cutting to half a solar day concluding autumn. Principal Leane Linson said the school solar day was cutting from viii periods final yr to 4 periods this year. School starts at 8:45 and past noon students are done, with an optional 5th period art course and online courses for some students.
And some are reorganizing. In Carlsbad, the Carlsbad Unified School District Lath of Trustees voted last week to reorganize and relocate Carlsbad Village Academy, the commune's continuation school, and Carlsbad Seaside Academy, an independent report schoolhouse, to Carlsbad High School. This relocation of almost 200 students to the high schoolhouse could save the district nearly $300,000 per year.
In a statement, board president Kelli Moors said she voted "with a heavy middle" to relocating the programs. "It'due south non about schoolhouse performance, it's about the money," she said. "We're in desperate times." The district is facing a budget arrears of $2.4 million this year, and a possible deficit of $9 one thousand thousand next yr.
Since 1965, state police force requires districts with more than 1 hundred 12thursdaygrade students to offer a continuation program, according to the 2008 study cited above. But school districts may be able to comply with the state mandate if their students can receive continuation education in a neighboring district or school.
"It is an choice for districts to reorganize their services to see their fiscal objectives," Jacie Ragland, a consultant in the California Department of Education's Educational Options Office. noted. "That's a local decision."
Some continuation school students say that without the more than intensive back up they receive, they would not have graduated, a view echoed by their parents.
Juana Ramirez, 18, was referred by Chico Loftier school counselors in the fall of 2009 to Fair View continuation school, and eventually graduated last May. At Off-white View, she says what really fabricated a difference was the support she received from Nancy Medina, a social worker at the school She found herself hanging out between and after classes in Medina's part. "She pushed me to exercise improve," Ramirez said. "She gave me the support I never had."
Ramirez is is now attending Butte College in Oroville e of Chico. She is the showtime in her family to attend college.
Chico landscaper Juan Cisneros sought out the Fair View continuation plan for his daughter, Nayeli, who had struggled with schoolwork at both of Chico's traditional high schools and at a school in Turlock. At Fairview she ended up getting a lot more attention than she had received in other schools, he said.
Nayeli concluded up graduating from Fair View last December and she, too, at present attends Butte. For that, her father said, "I give total credit to Fair View."
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Source: https://edsource.org/2012/continuation-schools-close-in-some-rural-districts/7851
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