Point Loma Cluster Schools

What Are Your Ideas to Reconfigure Schools To Save $?

2011-10-18T17:43:00.001-07:00

The Point Loma Cluster Schools Foundation wants to hear from you. Over the past few days and upcoming weeks, we would like to her your thoughts and ideas on possible school closures and reconfiguration. In the forum, we are looking for ideas. The district estimates it will save $400,000 to $500,000 per year per school closure. The budget crises is real - read the The Ticking Time Bomb of San Diego Unified School District Finances and San Diego Schools Chief "On The Road To Insolvency.

Currently, the Point Loma Cluster has 6,400 students. 1,800 students come to our cluster from outside cluster boundary. Due to serious budget constraints, it is likely that in the future the District will only offer transportation to students as required by law - which will reduce to number of students in our cluster. {We are working to get an estimate on the estimated decline in enrollment}.

Learn about the District's Proposed Point Loma Realignment / School School Closure.

Now, what are your ideas?

SDUSD Considers Closing Cluster School(s)

2011-10-04T07:56:00.000-07:00

San Diego Unified School District is facing a sixth year of reductions in state funding. As part of its budget submission for the 2011-12 school year, it must submit the plan for the current year and projections for the next two years. The submission for the 2012-13 school year included $5 million that could come from "school realignments," which can include closing schools, changes to grade-level configurations, moving and consolidating programs, and the need for additional school sites, should additional capital funds become available. The District estimates it will save $500,000 per school closing.

The Point Loma Cluster consists of 10 schools with over 6,400 students. Schools include:

Barnard (K-6, 275 students)
Cabrillo (K-4, 195 students)
Dewey (K-4, 433 students)
Loma Portal (K-4, 409 students)
Ocean Beach (K-4, 406 students)
Silver Gate (K-4 / 540 students)
Sunset View (K-4 / 441 students)
Dana (5-6 / 786 students)
Correia (7-8 / 873 students)
Point Loma High (9-12 / 2,065 students)

To get detailed data about our cluster schools performance, enrollment, facilities, see:

Point Loma Cluster Google Map and PL Cluster Enrollment Data 10-12.11

The District's proposal for the Point Loma Cluster includes:

Close Cabrillo Elementary effective July 2012.
Close Barnard campus but keep the Mandarin Magnet K-6 program by relocating it to the Dana campus effective September 2012. Expand the magnet focus from Mandarin Chinese to a Pacific Rim Language Immersion K-8 program.
Close Dana Middle School Grade 5 effective July 2012.

Convert Dewey, Loma Portal, Ocean Beach, Silver Gate, Sunset View from K-4 to K-5 schools effective September 2012.
Dana's current fifth graders will return to Dana for sixth grade in September 2012. The sixth grade program will share the Dana campus with the Pacific Rim. Language Immersion K-8 program for the 2012-13 school year.

Completely close Dana Middle School effective July 2013.
Correia's grade level configuration remains the same for 2012-13, but will convert to a 6-8 middle school in 2013-14. Correia will serve as the only middle school in Point Loma.
Point Loma High School is not impacted by above recommendations.

The SDUSD staff and board is seeking and wants input from the community. The Point Loma Cluster Schools Foundation has scheduled a series of community meetings: Information Meeting Oct. 17, Informational Meeting October 18 and a Town Hall Meeting (Oct 24th).

To learn more and get the facts, see: Point Loma Cluster School Closing / Realignment.

Point Loma Cluster Schools Empowerment Framework

2011-02-23T12:36:00.000-08:00

Background

The Point Loma Cluster Schools Foundation (PLCSF) is a group of parents, teachers, and principals from the Point Loma community who convened around the central goal of advancing the cluster into an outstanding, cohesive K-12 environment for the children of Point Loma and San Diego. Grounded in a strategic plan, the PLCSF and the cluster community engaged in a year-long dialogue to consider options for an innovative system of public school governance to better serve the goal of student achievement across all student populations.

From this dialogue, key elements emerged that suggest a framework that builds on a charter-school like concept of site-based management, aligns resources within the cluster, and enables schools to tailor core decisions to the needs of the community. These key elements align with research that points to a dramatic relationship between real decentralization, or the bottom-up organizational model in which individual schools are empowered to make core decisions, and the success of students.

Key elements of empowered schools FRAMEWORK - Four FREEDOMS

Our next step in the dialogue process is to craft a revolutionary new Empowered Schools Agreement that includes a significant level of decision-making at the cluster level. This agreement will take the district-led Community-Based School Reform Model to the next level and outline the key elements necessary to support a cluster-led Empowered Schools Framework—an innovative, adaptive, sustainable, and accountable learning environment.

The Point Loma Cluster will work collaboratively to craft an Empowered Schools Agreement based on four essential freedoms which include the discretion to control the school budget, curriculum, staffing, and scheduling, as well as the cornerstones of accountability and leadership. Over the next month, cluster stakeholders will provide input into the agreement development as we work to delineate both cluster-level autonomy and increased site-level principal authority.

Link: Empowered Schools Framework

For more background, see Governance on the Point Loma Cluster web site.

What do you think?

Questions for Point Loma Cluster Community Forum

2011-01-31T21:04:00.000-08:00

Please post your questions for the "Is Charter a Better Way" community forum below. There will be ample to time to ask questions which will be submitted to our moderator to ask the panel. Please note that there will also be the opportunity to write questions for the moderator at the forum - but to the extent we can get question before the session it will help facilitate and streamline the process so more questions can be heard.

For more information about the conversations in our cluster, please see: Point Loma Cluster Governance.

For more information about the forum, please see: Is Charter a Better Way?

Please post questions below. They will be pulled from this blog up to the 4pm the day of the event.

Point Loma Cluster Community Forum - Is Charter a Better Way?

2011-01-31T20:52:00.000-08:00

The Point Loma Cluster Schools Foundation invites you (parents, teachers, staff and community stakeholders) to a community dialogue on February 2, 2011 from 6pm to 8pm at Barnes Tennis Center. Link to Information.

This session continues the work of of cluster in exploring Cluster Governance options, to engage a dialogue (not a debate) in an effort to learn more about charter schools, best practice and innovation in education. This is not intended to be a charter movement or to "sell charter schools" to our community.

For the past 12 months the Point Loma Cluster Schools Foundation (PLCSF) has reached out to stakeholders hosting community outreach forums at 8 of our 10 cluster schools and sent out cluster wide survey to to over 6,000 stakeholders to hear your voice. A common theme from our community regarding our cluster schools has been control of budget and programs, accountability, teacher evaluation and support, data driven decision making, hiring flexibility at school sites, engaging / relevant curriculum, paced / personalized learning environments, de-tracking of students, stability of leadership, flexible / adaptive schools and real time assessment.

In addition to the above, the PLCS has been put forth various governance models for discussion by our community. No decisions have been made. Current models being discussed in our community include:

Continuing to improve the current model

Exploring individual charter school options

Exploring a charter district of cluster schools

Exploring forming our own Point Loma School District

For more information, please see Point Loma Cluster Governance.

Are Charter Schools a Better Way?

2010-11-18T09:54:00.001-08:00

Education is the social justice issue of this century. 67% of US citizens believe we have a crises in education. Reform conversations are occurring at a rapid pace throughout the US. President Obama says money without reform will not fix the problem. Nationally, 32 states have already changed laws to support reform to create better schools.

Despite improvement of cluster schools, 3 out of 10 students are not proficient in English Language Arts and and 1 out of 2 students are not proficent in Math. At the High School level, 4 out of 5 students are not proficient in Math.

For the past 12 months the Point Loma Cluster Schools Foundation (PLCSF) has reached out to stakeholders hosting community outreach forums and sending out cluster wide survey to hear your voice. A common theme from our community regarding our cluster schools has been control of budget and programs, accountability, teacher evaluation, data driven decision making, hiring flexibility at school sites, engaging / relevant curriculum, paced / personalized learning environments, de-tracking of students, stability of leadership and flexible / adaptive schools. >>> Click Here To Learn More.

The Point Loma Cluster Schools Foundation invites you to a community dialogue "Are Charters a Better Way?" on February 2, 2011. >>> Click Here For Details. Get involved, hear from a great panel, learn more about our cluster schools and have your voice heard! Follow us on Twitter.

What Do Schools Of The Future Look Like?

2010-10-22T09:35:00.000-07:00

Schools of the future look much different than the schools we have today. Think about a Starbucks, comfortable, collaborative and engaging. Technology becomes the enabler of personalized, paced and student centric learning. This is not the school we attended.

The needs of students have changed, and so have the tools we now have to engage them. We know that students learn in many different ways - and the current 1 on 30 model of educational delivery with one teacher, 30 textbooks does not enable a personalized learning experience.

So, imagine this learning environment - laptops, online curriculum and assessment, a real time online student tutor AND teacher in the classroom (oh and the classroom is comfortable and collaborative). As curriculum and assessment shift to online delivery for standards based content, teachers become relieved of manually "inventing lesson plans and correcting homework" - so they have more time. Students become enabled to move at their own pace to master content - not forced to follow the one size fits all the pace of the class. Students, parents and teachers have real time assessments - to track progress and implement remediation. So think of the student centric learning environment as "personalized, paced, relevant and adaptive".

Web based curriculum 2.0 is coming - and it will be rich, relevant, real time and engaging - not to mention multi lingual and have a smartness to remediation. Learning environments of the future will give teachers more time with students - so the new ratio becomes "time per student" not "teacher per student".

To learn more, see: Schools of the Future, watch Sir Ken Robinson RSA Animation, Listen to Harvard Professor Clayton Christiansen and read his book Disrupting Class.

Listen to Dr. David Thornburg, Making The Shift From Teaching To Learning

View Engaging, Empowering, and Educating All Students For the 21st Century!

What do you think?

Point Loma Cluster Governance - Budget Pilot

2010-01-27T07:23:00.000-08:00

The Point Loma Cluster is exploring a "cluster governance model". This is consistent with the SDUSD board strategy enabling governance at the cluster level to better meet the needs of the community. A cluster governance model could enable our community schools to have more budget control at the school site level as well as create a platform of budget synergy between schools. The total budget for our 10 cluster schools (6,000 students) is $36MM. School site budget vary between $5,500 per student and as high as $8,900 per student. This is the beginning of a community dialogue - the Point Loma Cluster Schools Foundation will work closely with ALL stakeholders to ensure that this process is inclusive, transparent and collaborative. Outcomes need to be synergistic, sustainable and accountable. Please share your thought and ideas on how we can better utilize our school site budgets as well as create budget synergy within our cluster. For more information see Point Loma Cluster Governance.

School Safety & Traffic

2008-04-13T08:38:00.000-07:00

The Point Loma Cluster is interested in hearing your thoughts School Safety & Traffic. Please share your thoughts, ideas and comments here.

School Start Times - 2008.09

2008-04-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

SDUSD must cut $80 MM from the District Budget. These cuts are going to impact staffing, transportation and other resources. SDUSD has approved a plan which would modify the start / end times of many of the Point Loma Cluster schools. Please let us know your thoughts and make to answer the poll question to the right side of this page. Click Here To Learn More and post your thoughts below.