School Age

As promised, the San Francisco Unified School District is rolling out a new school assignment process this year, with more weight given to where a child lives and, for elementary schools, where a child went to preschool. The changes are expected to support the new/old trend of kids attending neighborhood schools, as kids within a school’s “attendance area” are all but guaranteed a seat. But parents can still tour and apply for any school they wish.

With school tours for next year’s students beginning at the start of October, the district has launched a website that might make the process a bit easier. Visit sfusd.edu/enroll, choose the level of school you’re looking for (elementary, middle, high school), and then narrow the results using any one of seven variables, including neighborhoods, ZIP codes, start times, school hours, and other factors. Play around with it a bit and eventually you’ll be directed to a list of schools with links to each school’s website.

You’ll have to get really specific then, as each school has its own touring process. You may have to make an appointment or just show up for a group tour on a certain date. But the SFUSD site at least has more information on the assignment process to help the (justifiably) confused parent.

A study published in this month’s issue of medical journal Pediatrics confirms what parents have been worriedly noting for some time: girls are going into puberty younger than ever before.

The study looked at 1,293 girls aged 6 to 9 in East Harlem, Cincinnati, and the Bay Area. Each group was made up of 30 percent each whites, blacks and Hispanics, and 5 percent Asians. Girls were measured to see if their breasts were beginning to develop, which the study theoretically considered the beginning of puberty. The results? At age 7, 10.4 percent of whites, 23.4 percent of blacks and 14.9 percent of Hispanic girls were developing breasts. At 8 years, the figures increased to 18.3 percent, 42.9 percent and 30.9 percent, respectively.

Lead researcher Frank Biro, who is director of adolescent medicine at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, told the New York Times that his team blames the result on obesity (body fat produces estrogen that triggers breast growth), as well as on environmental triggers: “‘It’s certainly throwing up a warning flag,” Dr. Biro told the Times. “I think we need to think about the stuff we’re exposing our bodies to and the bodies of our kids. This is a wake-up call, and I think we need to pay attention to it.”

Biro also told the Times that his research team was now looking at the girls’ hormone levels and doing lab tests to measure their exposure to certain substances.

Just as parents of kids in San Francisco public schools are breathing a sigh of relief after assignment letters went out Saturday, the school board has voted unanimously to approve a new assignment plan for next year. Parents who hoped neighborhood schools would be the new order may be disappointed: Under the new plan, children living in census tracts with the lowest test scores are given assignment priority over kids living in the school’s attendance area.

The San Francisco Chronicle explains the new rules with a list:

New system

Students would be assigned to high-demand schools using the following order of preferences:

Elementary schools

– Students with siblings in the school

– Students who attended preschool in the school’s attendance area

– Those in low-scoring census tracts

– Those in the preferred school’s attendance area

– All others

Middle schools

(For those participating in choice process)

– Students with siblings in the school

– Those in low-scoring census tracts

– Those in the school’s attendance area

– Those in densely populated attendance areas

– All others

High schools

– Students with siblings in the school

– Those in low-scoring census tracts

– All others

Announcement of the new rules has been met with guarded praise from parents. As one typical commenter on the SF K Files sums it up: “I expect the result of the assignment system will be old wine in new bottles. Low SES families will continue to participate in the system at a lower rate than high SES families. Higher SES families will continue to fill high-demand schools in disproportionate numbers. Schools will remain imbalanced and segregated to some extent.”

An East Bay school district made national news this week when the Alameda Board of Education voted to replace a curriculum that emphasized tolerance for gay people with a more general lesson about bullying.

The original lesson, a.k.a. “Lesson 9,” became a hot topic due to the national controversy over gay marriage, and became an extremely divisive issue amongst East Bay Parents, sparking weeks of intense meetings, and a lawsuit. Gay parents hoped that Lesson 9 would prevent their children getting grief, while other parents argued that elementary school children aren’t old enough to learn about gay issues.

The new curriculum agreed upon by the board will include six children’s books that talk about stereotypes and how they hurt people, including gays.

A dozen Alameda families sued the school district earlier this year, contending that parents should be notified in advance of the gay-tolerant lessons, so their kids can be excused. The judge in the case sided with the district, ruling that a state law that allows parents to “opt-out” of discussions about human sexuality was not applicable to Lesson 9.

A kid who’s using his arms to act out (hitting his little sister, say), obviously needs something else to do with those arms. Scaling the heights at an indoor rock-climbing gym is an excellent way to exhaust those little arms. Every Bay Area gym owned by Touchstone Climbing (and there are Touchstone gyms in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland, amongst other cities) has programs for kids.

During the school year there are ten-week climbing camps for ages 6-14, usually on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 4pm to 6pm, wherein instructors teach school-age kids the basics of climbing. And in the summertime there are week-long and multi-week camps; lucky Berkeley kids get to meet their instructors at Cragmont Rock Park for a day of outdoors rock climbing. And at all Touchstone camps, parents can join the kids each Friday to climb alongside them.

Call the gym nearest you for dates and pricing but the ten-week sessions run about $200-250, while camps are about the same amount each week.

Mission Cliffs Touchstone Rock Climbing & Fitness, 2295 Harrison Street, San Francisco, 415-550-0515; Class 5 Fitness Touchstone Rock Climbing & Fitness Gym, 25-B Dodie Street, San Rafael, 415-485-6931; Berkeley IronWorks Touchstone Rock Climbing & Fitness, 800 Potter Street, Berkeley, 510-981-9900; Great Western Power Co., 520 20th Street, Oakland, 510-452-2022. All Touchstone gyms can be found at touchstoneclimbing.com.

A landmark 1990 study by the American Association of University Women showed something scary about American girls: by the time they’re in sixth grade, they associate masculinity with power and opportunity and femininity with reserve and restraint. No sexist pig has to keep these girls down; they’ll do it all by themselves.

But not if they can pilot a sea kayak with confidence, or rappel down the side of a cliff. Or, at least, that’s the thinking behind GirlVentures, a San Francisco non-profit that takes girls in 6th-9th grades on vigorous outdoor adventures designed to let them take risks that pay off. They hike, bike, climb mountains, they learn self-defense moves. They bond in the physical, exhilarating ways that are so often closed off to girls, and in doing so, GirlVentures hopes, they will be able to take a flying leap through any glass ceiling.

GirlVentures offers month-long classes on self-defense and urban hikes during the school year, as well as a once-a-week rock climbing class in the East Bay that’s developed a cult following. The prime summer offerings are two-week backcountry camping trips into the Sierra Nevadas. For more information, visit girlventures.org.

Healthy-food-oriented parents whose kids attend a SFUSD school will want to be at Mission High School on Thursday night, at a special meeting organized by parents who hope to change SFUSD’s food policies. Here’s what the flyer says:

Are you interested in learning more about the food in SFUSD schools, and how to improve it? Do you want to see more fresh fruits and vegetables served with school meals? Perhaps you have heard about the food in Berkeley schools and wonder why San Francisco is different? Are you dreaming about locally-grown foods in our cafeterias?”

Why, yes! Yes, I am! I’ll see you there. This is just an evening of brainstorming; petitioning the SFUSD will come later. The meeting is at Thursday, May 21 at 7pm at Mission High School, 3750 18th Street (at Dolores) in San Francisco. Email lenabrook@yahoo.com or visit groups.yahoo.com/group/sffoodsystems/.

For more inspiration, see our earlier post on Ann Cooper, Director of Nutrition for the exemplary Berkeley Unified School District.

Do you have a budding Broadway baby? San Francisco performance company Musical Theatre Works has been holding classes and mounting shows for 12 years, providing a venue for theater-loving kids to get out there and show them what they’ve got. Younger kids (kindergarten and first grade) start out with theater games and songs; kids in grades 2-6 move into stagecraft and improv, and motivated kids aged 8-18 can audition for a space in the Main Stage Performance Company, which puts on several full-scale musicals yearly.

This fall, the little kids will be working on songs and dances from Mary Poppins, the medium-size kids are taking on Wicked, and the performance company will be putting its spin on the Wizard of Oz. Those classes start in September. There’s also a Theatre Works summer program, three three-week sessions in June, July, and August, for kids aged kindergarten to tenth grade.

All classes and performances are held at the Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way (at Roosevelt) in San Francisco. Call 415-641-5988 or visit musicaltheatreworks.org.

Harvey Milk Center, located almost in the exact center of San Francisco adjacent to Duboce Park, has been closed for a few years while its sagging facilities were renovated. The work’s finally almost done, and now Center staff is moving in to the spiffy new digs and cranking up its offerings again with a set of summer day camps. They’re school-day-length and relatively reasonably priced: about $340-$375 for a two-week session, with after-care available for $60 a day.

Offerings include art classes, dance, capoeira, photography (using Harvey Milk’s darkroom facilities, well-known to local photographers), and an intriguing class on making musical instruments from wood and other raw materials. Given that before the renovation, the Center’s facilities were so-so while its instructors were fab, parents may be excited about this ground-floor opportunity to play in a cool new place.

Summer sessions begin June 15 and run through August 14;  camps are for ages 6-9 and run two weeks, Monday through Friday from 9:45am to 3:45pm (after-care is available from 9am to 5pm). The Harvey Milk Center is located at 50 Scott Street (at Waller Street) in San Francisco; call 415-554-8742 visit sfreconline.org.

Plenty of kids will learn how to paint or play soccer this summer…but how many will learn how to make neon art, or the art of blacksmithing? Oakland institution The Crucible has its spring open house this Saturday, the perfect opportunity to check out some unusual demos (art bikes! fire dancing!), and learn about the Crucible’s summer/vacation camps and youth classes.

Kids aged 8-11 get the safest classes: sculpture, jewelry-making, woodcarving. Students age 12 and up, however, get to play with fire, literally: blacksmithing, an introduction to neon art, welding, robotics. Learn about all of them tomorrow, and see what other artists large and small have wrought in the eclectic art exhibition. There’s food and live glassworking and metal casting, and probably dangerous things that spit fire. Oh goody!

The spring open house begins at 11am and runs until 5pm at The Crucible, 1260 Seventh Street (at Union Street), Oakland; call 510-444-0919 or visit thecrucible.org.