I received an interesting email today from Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) Trustee John Palacio, chronicling the turn-about in the SAUSD’s “hard line” stand on the issue of High School Certificate of Completion since 2005.
As Palacio put it, “Typical hypocrisy, regardless of your opinion on the high school exit exam.”
Los Angeles Times, 11/7/05–
“We’re not going to pretend,” said Susan Brandt, a spokeswoman for Santa Ana’s schools, where at least one-third of more than 3,200 seniors have yet to pass the exam. “If lots of kids put a cap and gown on and pretend, they would be satisfied and their families would be satisfied. We’re not giving them that; we’re not going to dumb it down for you.”
Orange County Register, 1/05/06 —
Santa Ana Unified, where 31 percent of 2,800 seniors have failed the test, won’t offer any alternative certificate. “We don’t want any student to think that this test is not for real,” said Al Mijares, Santa Ana Unified superintendent
Los Angeles Times, 5/13/06–
“Assistant Supt. Lewis Bratcher of the Santa Ana Unified School District said the purpose of the exam is noble, but its methods are flawed. “Everyone wants accountability,” he said. “The issue with this exam is it’s one-size-fits-all.” Six hundred of the 2,200 seniors in Santa Ana have not passed one or both parts of the exam. Santa Ana Supt. Al Mijares added that while he was heartened for this year’s seniors, he believed the two-year delay and Friday’s ruling send confusing messages to students. “I think they either have to put it aside for good, or create a moratorium and put this under serious study,” he said.”
SAUSD School Board Meeting, 4/25/06 —
Board votes 3-2 with Rosemary Avila and John Palacio dissenting to offer the High School Certificate of Completion and to participate in graduation ceremonies for the Class of 2006 Seniors who have met all the District’s graduation requirements other than passing the California High School Exit Exam.
District Staff promised to have a timely intervention plan in place to assist the
Class of 2006 Seniors in passing the California High School Exit Exam so that the High School Certificate of Completion that they would be receiving would be changed to a High School Diploma. Also that the waiver of graduation requirements is only for one year and that no waiver extensions would be requested for the Class of 2007.
SAUSD School Board Meeting, 6/12/07 —
Board votes 4-1 with John Palacio dissenting to extend the offering of High School Certificate of Completion and to participate in graduation ceremonies for the Class of 2007 Seniors who have met all the District’s graduation requirements other than passing the California High School Exit Exam.
The waiver of graduation requirements is extended for an additional year due to District Staff not developing and implementing a timely intervention plan for assisting both the Classes of 2006 and 2007 Seniors.
This is one example of why I am glad my child goes to Mater Dei! He passed a sample of this test his Sophmore year!
This is an example of dealing with parent questions the easy way.
Just pretend like the student will possibly get a diploma in the summer after his/her senior year.
Let the kid walk. By the time the parents figured out the reason why their child didn’t pass was most likely because high numbers of the teachers assigned to students lacked the experience, the resources or the support( or combination) to make sure the student was prepared for the test.
Or just fudge the grades and give the kid’s family the false sense that something was actually being learned and pretend like it was a shame the test was so “hard”.
The district practice of running off experienced teachers in favor of substitutes or newly minted/untenured teachers is coming home to roost.
The assistant superintendent for the secondary schools has indeed been asleep at the wheel. This is a pathetic bandaid on a gaping wound.
No diploma, no problem. They probably can’t read this bogus certificate anyways. Buy hey they get to feel good about themselves for walking through graduation(and life for that matter) not knowing anything.
Ir cracks me up every time I hear someone criticizing John Palacios as School Board member. He is the only member of the Board who has the integrity to stand up for educating our children and demanding accountability for the district, its administration and its students. What kind of lesson do these kids get by being allowed to graduate when they remain essentially ignorant and uneducated? It tells them that they do not have to work hard to achieve goals, they do not have to discipline themselves, and they will be given a pass for their failures.
This is a grotesquely political abdication by the pathetic SAUSD, its pathetic administration, and its pathetic Board, Palacios excepted.
I am embarrassed these schools and these people represent the city in which I live. Shame, shame shame, Richardson, Noji, Avila, and Hernandez. You all should be recalled.
It’s sad than anyone has to send their children to Santa Ana schools. Shame on the school board and shame of the voters for electing them. Too bad some of you with kids in the district are not willing to do the hard work to get elected to the board. Also, too bad Sal Tinajero checked out when he did. They need his leadership.
Shame on Audrey Noji for parading Natalie Fuentes as her personal political poster student to plead her agenda to allow students, who did not pass the high school exit exam,to walk with their graduating class. Noji knew she needed a sympathetic sucker to accomplish her goal of waiving graduation requirements for the class of ’07 and Natalie Fuentes willingly obliged.
Ms. Fuentes has been the subject of much ridicule because most find it perplexing that a student with a 3.5 GPA has not passed the math portion of the exam 5 times! Let’s ask the obvious question: where was Ms. Fuentes counselor? And where was Dr. Noji when this student needed her most? Ms. Fuentes’s GPA indicates that she is a good student. Fuentes should have been one of the easy students to provide substantial intervention ensuring CASHEE success. What went wrong?
Dr. Noji “failed” to deliver on her pledge, when she was board president, to provide and implement a plan to provide intervention to seniors who needed CASHEE assistance.
Noji’s lack of educational integrity continues to undermine the task of educating our youth.
Noji’s 16 years on the school board has significantly contributed to its current decline.
Dr. Noji should be the perfect poster school board member for term limits!
Yamagata Noji must go!
No wonder kids are dropping out at the rate they are in Santa Ana. The whole district is a bad joke! Students are better off out of school and working any job they can find.
#6
Noji petitioned for letting the kids walk because she was in her usual CYA mode. Look for the same in ’08.
What responsible and enlightened educator allows students to casually slip through the system?
Noji is NOT an educator. She is merely an administrator.
C’mon, there’s a reason Noji’s been denied two or three president positions at the junior college level.
One of the sick ironies of how poorly this school district is operated – ignoring the pleas of parents who have children with developmental delays and severe disabilities.
These students are entitled to attend neighborhood schools by law, yet they are relegated to a select few schools. This practice is segregation and is illegal, which the district administrators know full well. Of course, at some point, this illegal practice will become yet another national embarassment.
The few high schools that these disabled students are allowed to attend will not issue any kind of certificate of attendance/completion/whatever despite requests year after year by their families.
Why is a certificate so important? Because families are proud of the efforts of their children and want to display a framed certificate in their homes. These students will always be dependent upon their families for care and a certificate is an acknowledgment that the entire family made sure that these innocennt children had the best education available.
Absolutely NO ONE is going to make the mistake of thinking a certificate of attendance would be a diploma. So why is the district so stingy with this student population?
So despite the year-after-year insults to these families who have to suffer bigoted disregard of legal precident towards disabled students, hard working families entrust their children to SAUSD. And who can blame them for expecting and then asking for some kind of official certificate suitable for framing in their homes?
Now it appears that everyone and his cat can get some kind of offical certificate from Mrs. Russo. For sure, the only ones who have tried their very best and have attended classes faithfully yet cannot get any kind of SAUSD certificate at all, are the most vulnerable students in the system – the ones with legitimate disabilities.
Pat Machado puts the Kabash on this request each and every year.
What will her excuse be this year?
Even the simpliest of problems cannot be solved by the incompetents who sit on their hands year after year.
OMG is Pat Machado still lingering around? This incompetent and ineffective administrator pulls down a hefty 6-digit salary to do absolutely nothing.
It was a disgrace that Mijares kept her around, but it appears Jane is content with her lack luster performance.
Oh well, weak leaders always surround themselves with weaker underlings.
The hypocrsy runs deep. This post highlights how a non-certificated or non-classified individual can swoop into a school and impose their ways.
I’d like to know Risk Management’s take on a non SAUSD employee maintaining an office on a school site. LIABILITY.
Anonymous Says:
7/13/2007 12:32 AM
SAUSD’s leadership history, especially at Willard, leads employees to distrust administrators. #1173’s response to #1171 is an example. The numerous and inconsistent spelling mistakes seem to be deliberate, plus the natural rhythym and usage of the English language makes me feel the author is not a parent/volunteer from Willard’s parent center. I may be wrong about the author, but there are other inconsistencies that need to be clarified.
1) If there were personnel issues with the Comm. Worker, Principal Bishop should have worked with her to improve her work. She and Bishop have been friends for many years. In spite of these problems, good things were happening with the parent center; the counselors met regularly with the parents and more and more parents were participating in Willard’s activities. Soon Bernedette took over the parent center, meetings with the counselors stopped, traditional events (breakfasts, lunches, PTA, Book Fair help) involving the teachers and parents also stopped. Bernedette now runs the parent center, staff members are discouraged from participating, the Comm. Worker is now Public Enemy #1 and will not be returning. Bishop’s lack of leadership skills has created major distrust regarding parent involvement at Willard.
2) Why does #1173 criticize #1171 for reading OJ? It’s OK for a “parent/volunteer” to read it but not a staff member? Why is it assumed #1171 is a teacher? 1171 could be the nurse, a counselor, instr. assistant, maybe even one of the ass’t principals. And with what authority is 1173 ordering 1171 to write lesson plans? In the middle of July at 3 in the morning?!
3) Whoever you are #1173, you have no right to criticize the teachers who left Willard! Each teacher who left gave so much to the school and to the students. Many of them were forced to leave because of the District’s reorganization due to changing enrollment. Others left, not because of their fear of changes, but they were tired of the changes being made at Willard that were making it a harder place to work at. Bishop openly blames teachers but doesn’t offer effective support. His remarks at a recent staff mtg. were equivalent to placing his hands on teacher’s backs and pushing them out of the school.
Willard is not an easy place to work at. It’s not a place where parents are getting the help they need. Most importantly, the students are not getting the education they deserve. This isn’t an opinion. Look at the numbers of 8th graders who didn’t get promoted or the ones that did, even though they had numerous Fs. Look at test scores, attendance records, discipline problems, and high school drop out rates. Bishop and Medrano aren’t looking at these. They’re too busy with their Corporate Academy and looking “sharp and efficient.”
Mrs. Medrano is in charge of SAEF.
No one really knows what it really accomplishes or how Medrano’s large salary can be justified.
The fact that she’s apparently taken to micromanage school district employees and official school functions is poor site management at best.
Risk management SHOULD BE alarmed at this kind of interference. The huge turnover at that school combined with a mishmash of unsupervised duties done by who knows?! is a recipe for disaster.
What is she doing there, anyways?
The problem is not the current school board it’s the teachers. There was a real dumbing down in the quality of teachers hired while Nativo Lopez was in charge and we are seeing the results now.
#14/Julie Stroud, Dave & Darren –
You are dead wrong! Your persistence to justify the ouster of Nativo Lopez is wearing thin.
It’s not the teachers and you know it. You continue to swallow Richardson’s Kool-Aide even though he’s rebuffed you and others over the Godinez fence issue.
Richardson and Noji lacked the courage and conviction to oust Al Mijares. And when it came time to appoint a new super they went with a candidate who had no supt. experience. Noji and Richardson chanted “Russo knows the community; but the hushed whispers of why Noji recruited Russo linger. Russo is Noji’s flunkie. Despite her New Jersey beginnings, Russo has no backbone. In her short time as Supt. more scandals have besetted the district.
Ya, it’s the teachers.
Saying the problem is not the teachers does not mean it’s the truth. Nativo hired more teachers that “reflect the community” and now the quality of the education in Santa Ana reflects the third world.
If you have the right last name and can count to ten in Spanish you can teach school in Santa Ana. The teachers are the problem and always have been the problem. Don’t blame the kids or the parents.
#16/#17
The pay in Santa Ana is generally “better” than Tustin or Irvine. However, good teachers are not willing to work under third world type tactics of coercion and intimidation by poorly trained and often previously-rejected managers.
The pay could really attract the best teachers in the county. However, SAUSD has a terrible reputation of disorganization, management by incompetence and corruption. Add to that the additional burden a teacher has to take on to supply his/her own classroom with materials and supplies that are normally supplied by the better school districts.
Lack of great teaching staff is not due to the pay offered. It is due to the selection process.
#16 & #17 will seize any opportunity to post derogatory comments about Hispanic teachers. These self-consumed Morrison Park residents, and their greyhound loving pals, continue to drink Richardson’s Kool-Aide despite Rob’s many disappointments as a school board member.
These gadflys don’t understand SAUSD has a less than stellar rep when it comes to its administrators. Why do you expect professionals to devout their lives to a school district that bullies, intimidates and threatens its teachers?
Not even a lowly flight attendant or the dog rescuer duo would take such abuse.
Keep sippin’ that Kool-Aide.
Sean you little dickens,
You wouldn’t be posting anon would you?
That last post has your stink all over it
Teachers Wanted- Santa Ana Unified School District! If you are getting tired of watching those Jerry Springer Re-runs or Telanovelas all day long then come on down and fill out an application. Since we don’t require our students to pass state exams to graduate then we feel it’s only fair to hire teachers who can’t pass state tests either. As long as you have good self-esteem, can count to 20 in Spanish, and believe cultural diversity trumps academic success then we are the school district for you. If you fill out an application now then we will also enter your name in a raffle to win a Plasma screen T.V. , tickets to a Chivas soccer game, or a years supply of the adult beverage of your choice.
#21: Why don’t you cite some FACTS to support those (boneheaded) opinions of yours, assmonkey.
#22
You must be new to the OJ. The a** monkeys you mention are Julie Stroud, Dave Hoen and Darren Shippen. They can’t handle the facts. They incite discourse wherever they hang their activist hat.
BTW .. the novelas they mention are evening only shows. The good ‘ole USA has the market tied up on the daytime soaps. That’s when the retired men/women and flight attendents pop bon-bons and wash them down with a designer martini.
#21 says …
“Since we don’t require our students to pass state exams to graduate then we feel it’s only fair to hire teachers who can’t pass state tests either.”
Your pal Rob Richardson and Audrey Noji voted to allow students who did not pass the high school exit exam to walk with their graduating class. If they truly cared about students graduating with a bona fide diploma they would have developed and implemented a PLAN to take corrective measures to ensure all graduates passed the high school exam. They did not.
Save your pent up anger for Richardson and Noji. They, along with Rosie Avila, have been major disappointment as school board members.
Richardson, Noji and Avila are three reasons the school board should have term limits.
Gruadutation is magic at Saddleback. One week, Seniors are sad because they will not be graduating. Another week and they are streaming out of the front office whooping and hollering that they get to graduate!
The magic act works for a certain group of seniors and it works for school administrators who need a certain amount of graduates to stay under the radar.
We estimate the number this year of about 40-60 magical graduates.
Good thing, too. If the graduate numbers had been dismal, someone might have questioned the staff turnover rates and the high numbers of inexperienced staff that the principal feels comfortable with.
#25
Graduation magic was sprinkled at Valley West HS as well. Lynn Kramer was begging teachers to pass students who did not have their math credits. Apparently a certain counselor, recently appointed to Godinez, failed to adequately do her job.
In the real workplace, people are let go for failing to do their job. SAUSD administrators enlist in illegal activity to secure their job position. And it’s acceptable.
Lest you forget. SAUSD entered Year 2/Program Improvement under NCLB because it did not meet its graduation rate. It’s currently sweating bullets over slippage into Year 3 and that’s the reason for *Graduation Magic.*
Message to Noji —
Did Natalie Fuentes pass the math portion of the high school exit exam?
#27
My son enters Godinez this fall. Who is the counselor you’re talking about? I want to make sure he doesn’t get her as his counselor.
Thank you.
#28
I think the reference to the counselor is Lynn Kramer.
That is my guess.
Hopefully they’ve cleaned up all the graffitti before your son starts school on that beautiful campus.