Preschools/Schools

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.

The State of California released its annual Academic Performance Index figures last week, and now parents can do a search-and-find and either be en-smuggened or horrified by what they find. The link to the school reports search form is here. Enter the first 3-4 letters of the school’s name and clicken-ze-click-click.

Every school in Cali is ranked under the system, based on comparison with schools with similar demographics, as well as the schools as a whole. Spring 2009 test scores also factor into the ratings. What you want to look for on the report is the “Base API” score, and the 2009 statewide rank. The Base API should be well above 700; anything 800 or above is outstanding. The statewide rank goes from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest.

API scores and rankings can be compared over time. Just select the option to see API rankings for 2008, 2007, and so on. If the scores are going up, you have an improving school on your hands, and vice versa. Also instructive is looking at the “List of 100 Similar Schools” for each school. There you can see how your school tracks against others. Happy submitting.

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.

Having heard horror stories about San Fran’s public schools, I’ve been surprised how many nice schools I’ve seen during this fall’s school tour process. Seems like I’m not alone in being pleasantly shocked, if a post last week from SF Gate blog The Mommy Files is to be believed. In “Let’s Face It: S.F. Has Good Public Schools” writer Amy Graff teases out several pertinent nuggets proving her case, such as:

• After nearly 40 years of declining enrollment, the San Francisco Unified School District’s applications went up by 308 in 2008, with 500 more in 2009.
• Enrollment is up so much that a closed school, De Avila on Haight Street, will be open next year.
• Earlier in 2009, “San Francisco schools posted the highest test scores (API) among urban districts in the state, far surpassing even the state average in both math and English.”
• The number of San Francisco public school students taking Advanced Placement tests has increased every year since 2000 and in 2009 increased 20 percent.

Of course, enrollment is still way down compared to a decade or two ago: enrollment in 2009 is about 55,000 students, a decrease from 62,000 in 1995. But after declining for four decades, a blip upwards is very interesting, indeed.

My theory? Housing is so expensive everywhere that parents figure they might as well stay renting in the city instead of splitting for the suburbs. It’s the influx of these parents (PTA membership is also way up in the city!) that are changing the schools, fast.

There’s a brief moment of time in each child’s life before he’s ready for preschool, but already seems to crave some kind of regular playtime with other kids. If you happen to live in or near the Montclair neighborhood of Oakland, the Montclair Community Play Center is Johnny-on-the-spot for those pre-preschool times. Starting at age 18 months, the MCPC has daily “toddler playtime” classes for kids up to 36 months. Caregivers attend with the child, and each day there’s music, snack, messy art projects, and circle time.

Starting at age 2.5 (and continuing through age 5.5), there are also drop-off summer camps that resemble short preschool days; a fine option for kids who haven’t yet gone to school or whose schools don’t have summer programs. You wanted to know what you were going to do with Junior all day during the summer, right? Considering that most summer camps start at age 6 at the very earliest, the MCPC is a valuable gap-filler for parents left in the lurch when school lets out.

Montclair Community Play Center is located at 5815 Thornhill Drive (at Grisborne Avenue), Oakland; call 510-810-0510 or visit mcpckids.org.

First-round assignments for incoming San Francisco Unified School District kindergarteners have just gone out, and at least 948 local families are currently writhing in agony, having received none of the seven schools they signed up for in the torturous SFUSD lottery system. Still other families are evaluating what they got with varying degrees of unhappiness, asking themselves questions like Can I really get to 40th and Cabrillo by 7:15 a.m.? and Is it worth putting up with getting our seventh-choice school to avoid the hell that is the second-round lottery?

With all the pain there is to go around, conversation is heating up again at the SF K Files, the definitive blog on the SFUSD assignment process.  Forget the SFUSD’s official bulletins; this is the blog with the real down-and-dirty, including the controversy over sibling assignments artificially swelling the percentage of parents the SFUSD claims got a first-round assignment, and the lightning-fast opening of new elementary school De Avila.

Though the blog mistress, a San Fran mom who started the blog when seeking an assignment for one of her two children, posts frequently on various topics, the real action is on the comments board, with useful insider gossip and advice, as well as snarky commentary from cranky parents.

Spaces are still available in the super-popular San Francisco Zoo day camps, set to run April 6-10 and April 13-17, during Bay Area school vacations, natch. The buzz on the camps is that little campers are led on adventurous walks to meet the different animals; they get a very intimate view and learn about their care and habitat from zookeepers. The springtime camp is particularly sweet, as that’s when the baby animals are born, and kids can marvel over nests and tiny, floppy baby paws. Then there are animal crafts and activities, and vigorous games. Kids seem to go crazy over it all, which is why the camps sell out every season.

For pre-K and kindergarten-aged kids (age 4 and up), the day runs from 9am until noon; kids in first through fourth grades come at 9am and hang around until 4pm. Early drop-offs (8am) are available for both sets of campers; the older group can also be picked up late at 5pm.

If you want to sign your child up, better hurry because once the camps are sold out, that’s it until summertime.

Call 415-753-7073, email zoocamp@sfzoo.org, or visit sfzoo.org.

Looks like Burlingame is having some of the same school problems San Francisco parents have dealt with in recent years. As the San Jose Mercury News reported Friday, two of the pricey city’s best-regarded elementary schools, Franklin and Lincoln, are expecting so many new students this fall that they’re forcing parents to enter a lottery for spots at the school.

The Burlingame parents are particularly incensed, because many of them left San Francisco to escape the school lottery process and be guaranteed entrance into one of the area’s top-of-the-line schools. They also feel they’ve been jerked around by school officials. As the Mercury News writes, “Parents of about 75 children were told repeatedly by district and school officials their youths would be admitted to the high-performing but overcrowded Lincoln Elementary School on a first-come, first-serve basis. During the first day of registration on Feb. 2, about 30 to 35 parents showed up before dawn to be first in line, including a few who even camped out overnight. But when Principal Diane Garber arrived at 7 a.m., she told the parents the Burlingame Elementary School District had instituted a random lottery system for admissions.”

Ooh, yeah, that does suck! But it could be worse, Burlingame parents. You could have had your assured spot at Flynn or Alvarado yanked right out from under you.

Local boy Dave Eggers is a hero for a reason, and only part of it has to do with his 2000 bestseller A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Eggers made some money, and he plowed it right back into San Francisco, founding the kids’ writing support center 826 Valencia. Children age 6-18 can get free drop-in homework help and writing support, long-range one-on-one tutoring, or attend special workshops, like the upcoming Valencia Bay-farer series, where kids age 8-14 put together a little community newspaper under the tutelage of professional journalists. Teachers can also bring schoolkids to 826 Valencia for free field trips, including the popular Storytelling & Bookmaking course, at which students collaborate on a story which is illustrated, printed, and bound by the time the class is ready to leave.

Just dropping in to the 826 Valencia space is an experience in and of itself. Whimsical Eggers set the place up as a “pirate emporium,” with drawers full of bizarre items: tangled nets, glass eyes, sextants. There’s a giant fish tank with an enclosed hallway surrounding it, turning the tank into a mini movie theater, and a huge vat of sand with a stool in front of it so that kids can climb up and search for buried treasure inside. Bringing young ones here to wait for big sis to finish with her class won’t be a problem; in fact, you may be begged to go early.

826 Valencia is located at 826 Valencia Street (at 19th Street), in San Francisco. Call 415-642-5905 or visit 826valencia.org.

In a report released Thursday, a San Francisco Civil Grand Jury has recommended that the San San Francisco Unified School District should dump its “confusing, time-consuming, alienating” system of assigning students to schools via lottery, and instead assign students to schools in their neighborhood.

It was tough to hear over the “Oh HELL yeah” emanating from local parents, but the grand jury insulted the lottery system on all fronts: it’s expensive, it’s confusing, it chases intimidated families out of the city, and worst of all, it doesn’t even work. One 2005 study found that more than 50 percent of the SFUSD’s schools were “severely segregated.”

The lottery was only a stopgap solution anyway. As a story in the San Francisco Examiner explains, a 1983 NAACP suit caused a federal court to order San Francisco to integrate its public schools. Another lawsuit in 1991 said that using race to assign students to schools was also unfair. Thus our bizarre lottery system, which assigns weight to such factors as the languages students speak, their socioeconomic background, and the performance of individual schools.

For parents the process is stressful and confusing; for taxpayers the lottery’s expensive: it costs $2 million a year just to maintain the 29-member staff necessary to help parents with the application process. And here’s the real kicker: The federal order to desegregate the schools expired in 2005, so there’s not even anyone making us run it anymore.

Does that sound racist? I’m not jumping up and down that schools are so segregated. I drive by the nice, expensive private schools in town and see only white faces, and then by the schoolyards in the neighborhoods I can afford to rent in and see only brown ones. It bums me out because weren’t we supposed to be over this by now? Actually melting together in our melting pot?

It’s not working, but the lottery isn’t the solution we need either. And it’s a stressful time-suck for the parents and students who have to research scores of schools, and who can’t be sure which (if any!) of their ultimate choices they’ll get. And maybe they get School X all the way over on the other side of town, and either Mom or Dad are hauling them, or they’re getting up at 5:30am to take two buses in order to get there on time.

School board president Mark Sanchez agrees that the lottery ain’t working, and this fall there’ll be discussions and probably changes.

Yippee.