SAISD - how can it be fixed? More $? (Alamo, Alamo Heights: apartment complexes, renting)

[Montirob]

quest5120, are you talking about City of San Antonio council district 5, or SAISD member district 5? I'm #7 for both, but I was just curious. P-16 sounds interesting... I'll have to do some research on Texas' plans.

neddy, thanks for the Leander lead. I'll have to follow up. As I told the superintendent, perception, unfortunately, IS reality to the public at large. I also echoed the comment of another participant who said that SAISD needs to prepare and implement a strategic plan targeting students who are leaving the district for private schools or for other districts. Interesting comments about NISD. What schools were you in, and what were the issues that made you unhappy?

I guess I should clarify that we are still planning on private school because we feel that the public school system is becoming too concerned on testing and not on teaching critical thinking. The arts in general have also been pushed aside despite studies proving that they enhance learning.

[traficdogn]

Originally Posted by Montirob

R
My concern is not necessarily the high schools, but rather the elementary, primarily because in a couple of years my kid will be of age. The problem is that our elementary is notoriously bad. It also doesn't help that SAISD splits our neighborhood in half - you can't build a "critical mass" with only half of a neighborhood.

Thats a very good point. Our test based performance rating system, makes gerrymandering of neighborhoods high stakes.

ie. Higher socio-economic neighborhoods tend to bring in better scores. So a school district has an incentive to split them up into under-performing schools, or schools missing a particular demographic criteria.

I think the only way to beat this from occurring is by having a strong rotary / homeowners association take a stand on school boundaries.

[Bo]

I have to salute the SAISD superintendent for making the difficult choice to close 6 schools in the face of significant community opposition. Nobody wants to see their child's school close, but it was the best choice to make in the face of shrinking enrollment and diminishing resources.

[Montirob]

Yep. The middle school (or actually one of the middle schools) that serve our neighborhood (Mann) was voted to be closed. During the board meeting, Ed Garza (former mayor and current neighbor) spoke against closing the school. One of the issues he brought up was that 60% of the kids in the neighborhood who could go to SAISD schools actually go to PRIVATE schools. Interesting demographic tidbit, which reaffirms a SAISD's consultant's view that the party line "families are moving out of the area" is not entirely accurate. To tell you the truth, I bet that for my neighborhood (Ed lives in the adjacent one) the percentage sending to private school is actually higher.

At the previous, "sorry but we are going to close your school" meeting held by the district (which happened with only 2 days notice and which occured the same night as a competing meeting addressing the proposed flood plain revisions), it was mentioned that Mann may be converted into the proposed girls college prep academy. A promising concept, but when asked if the neighborhood would have preference, the answer was, "no." Looking at the online application for the academy, it notes that admission preference is given to low income students. So let me get this right... you want to create a magnet school to attract students, but you make it more difficult for those that can afford private school to attend?

[Spock's Beard]

Schools lose federal funding when they under-perform, so they gotta get their grades up. The catch is getting the grades up in an environment where many people do not see the benefit to an education. You gotta make the kids want to learn, which is the impossible part.


It doesn't help that SAISD is a relatively poor district that isn't getting any richer. Face it; most SAISD schools are ghetto. Many people in SAISD school districts are peope who live in apartments and housing and don't pay the taxes school districts draw from for funding.

Higher socio-economic neighborhoods tend to bring in better scores.

That's true. It's also because kids can look around them and see the rewards for having an education. Mommy is rich because she's a doctor and daddy is rich because he's a lawyer, and neither would be there without an education. When I was in my last year in high school, I was p*ssed when all the rich kids got scholarships to go to pretty much any college they wanted even though their parents could afford to pay for college. Then it occurred to me that they got the scholarships because almost all of them were on the honor roll.

Poor kids tend to not see the economic benefit to education, especially in an environment where welfare rewards teenage pregnancies and a lack of willingness to work to do better. Poor neighborhoods are filled with nice newer cars and people with nice name-brand clothes thanks to the system, so incentive to get out of it isn't there. Crap the average person on Welfare probably drives a car that's newer and nicer than mine, and I work.

[Spock's Beard]

Originally Posted by Montirob

I guess I should clarify that we are still planning on private school because we feel that the public school system is becoming too concerned on testing and not on teaching critical thinking. The arts in general have also been pushed aside despite studies proving that they enhance learning.

Personally I would rather have black-and-white knowledge through emphasis on standardized testing than "critical thinking," which in an academic sense means to me as your art teacher ranting politics. Too many kids come out of school as "experts" on socio-economic politics but incapable of finding most states on a damn map, and I think it's shameful. They'll tell you a million reasons why their teachers say the Iraq war is wrong, but give them a globe and tell them to find Iraq, and you get dumb blank stares.

Too many kids graduate high school without an adequate high school education, which is why a lot of them who want to go to college go to schools like San Antonio College (or "San Antonio high school" as one professor I had out at UTSA called it) to take remedial classes to get up to the level they should be at fresh out of high school. I believe that's because the kids aren't learning the material. If you know the material, then standardized tests should be a breeze. They always were for me. In school I always finished so quickly that I got bored waiting for the class to catch up so we could move on, and NEVER failed once. I didn't go to college straight after high school, and waited eight years. Since it had been so long, I had to re-take the SAT's on top of the entrance exams. With NO STUDYING, I passed all of them on the first try. I was a "C" student in high school. I have no sympathy for kids who can't pass standardized tests with material that should be easy for them if they atually bothered learning it.



The arts have been pushed aside because they're expensive. I wanted to play sax, but couldn't afford the $600+ for a good entry-level one (good ones cost $2,000+), and a banged-up used rental costed more than it was worth. In a school full of poor kids, affording the arts is a real problem for the students.

[traficdogn]

Originally Posted by Bowie

I have to salute the SAISD superintendent for making the difficult choice to close 6 schools in the face of significant community opposition. Nobody wants to see their child's school close, but it was the best choice to make in the face of shrinking enrollment and diminishing resources.

Maybe so..
As a city and its planning goes, I think we failed.

There is something wrong when there is a ton of construction and a ton overcrowded schools, yet we are in a situation which we need to shut-down inner city schools.

The reckless/unplanned growth has hurt our social stability and our pocketbook.

[cwh]

Originally Posted by traficdogn

Maybe so..
As a city and its planning goes, I think we failed.

There is something wrong when there is a ton of construction and a ton overcrowded schools, yet we are in a situation which we need to shut-down inner city schools.

The reckless/unplanned growth has hurt our social stability and our pocketbook.

Not much you can do about that. Unless you want the government to move all the people that had kids somewhere else so people with kids can move in.

[Montirob]

Originally Posted by Spock's Beard

Personally I would rather have black-and-white knowledge through emphasis on standardized testing than "critical thinking," which in an academic sense means to me as your art teacher ranting politics. Too many kids come out of school as "experts" on socio-economic politics but incapable of finding most states on a damn map, and I think it's shameful. They'll tell you a million reasons why their teachers say the Iraq war is wrong, but give them a globe and tell them to find Iraq, and you get dumb blank stares.

I think you misinterpreted my view. I agree that the standardized tests should be easy to pass. But... my wife, who teaches a core subject, has serious concerns about the emphasis from the state on the ways to get the kids to pass. Shortcuts are emphasized and not the idea behind the shortcuts. It's like knowing sohcahtoa for your basic trig functions but not knowing about the unit circle.

[traficdogn]

Originally Posted by cwh

Not much you can do about that. Unless you want the government to move all the people that had kids somewhere else so people with kids can move in.

Impact fees are quite popular and do a good job. Impact fee

These fees require developers to put money down for the infrastructure they will put a strain on. This includes roads, schools, parks etc.

Ie. If the developers had to pay for their share of costs related to the expansion of 1604, bandera, 281, and schools before they built the homes and shops, a lot more people would probably be living inside the loops right now.