The school district is one of the few places where the striated populations of the Tahoe/Truckee area mix; and it is struggling to accommodate not just the polar extremes of the community, but the families in the middle as well. Children without citizenship strive to learn enough English to get by in the United States, while in the next room – or the next desk – other children work to earn the kind of marks that will secure them a place on a University campus in California or elsewhere in the nation. The public schools mirror the changes that occur in the communities they serve – what happens inside school doors cannot be separated from the changes in the neighborhoods outside. The division between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ is becoming increasingly visible in local classrooms.
‘We’re just a reflection of what’s going on in the community,’ said Penny Burney, guidance counselor at North Tahoe High School. Residents of Truckee and the north end of Lake Tahoe can peer into that reflection and see some of the challenges and changes facing the community as a whole.
The close of the 2006/07 school year finds Tahoe Truckee Unified School District (TTUSD) still trying to meet the demands of No Child Left Behind. Facing the possibility of a third year in Program Improvement, the district is making comprehensive reforms to boost the test scores of its students – especially those students whose native language is Spanish. But as teachers and administrators spend more and more time poring over the results of math and English exams, some worry that the requirements of the U.S. and California Departments of Education are depriving district schools of their ability to teach to the intellects and interests of individual students. Meanwhile, in the background, hangs the strong possibility that the goals of No Child Left Behind are simply out of reach.
While the district endeavors to establish equilibrium in its academic offerings, it is also trying to balance its budget. TTUSD has been a ‘Basic Aid’ district for the last four years, and will be again next year, and its financial health is improving as a result. But after years of scraping by on sparse state funding, the TTUSD is confronting a deep drift of deferred expenses. It could take more than a decade for the district to dig its way out.
Students Flood Truckee While Lakeside Schools Dry Up
There are too many students at Truckee Elementary for all of them to eat lunch together. Instead, the school feeds students in waves. At noon, second-graders come in, then, ten minutes later, the third-graders arrive, followed by the rest of the grades in ten- and fifteen-minute increments. The kids are free to linger and eat as long as they want, though most opt to wolf their food and rush outside to the playground, which is crowded as well. The staff of Truckee Elementary has considered extending lunchtime to ease the crowding, but when kids aren’t eating, the lunch area becomes a classroom, and extra lunch minutes would mean less teaching time.
‘We’re the most impacted school in the district,’ said principal Cathy Valle, ‘Over half the school is modular classrooms.’
According to district projections, the situation in Truckee is going to get tighter. Though the relatively transient population and unpredictable economy of the Tahoe Truckee area make enrollment difficult to project, district administrators forecast significant growth in the Truckee area over the next ten years. Job opportunities for lower class families, as well as the Truckee Town Council’s commitment to affordable housing, influenced their prediction.
‘(Affordable housing projects) are a new thing to us in this area,’ said Facilities Planner and Fiscal Analyst, Todd Rivera, ‘but I would say, yeah they will cause an increase in people moving into the area.’
At Glenshire Elementary, the second most crowded school on the Truckee side of the district, principal Kathleen Gauthier is keeping her eye on housing developments as well, particularly the proposed Canyon Springs Development.
‘I’m starting to be concerned that (enrollment) could get out of hand and we could get too large,’ Gauthier said, ‘We really need to be concerned about capacity issues in our elementary schools.’
With an affordable housing project planned at National Avenue in Tahoe Vista, administrators are also expecting growth at Kings Beach Elementary over the next ten years; but growth isn’t predicted to be the norm on the district’s lakeside.
According to a district report, lakeside enrollment as a whole is the lowest it’s been in 20 years, and is expected to dwindle farther. Tahoe Lake Elementary, North Tahoe Middle School, and North Tahoe High School will be the sites most affected by the loss of students.
In the 1993/94 school year there were 405 students enrolled in Tahoe Lake Elementary, now there are 248, and the school’s principal, Danny Hyde, estimates he loses one employee every year as a result of the diminishing student population. ‘There used to be three or four kindergartens, now there are two,’ Hyde said.
Administrators at the middle and high schools are struggling to keep staff as well. TTUSD tries to provide one teacher for every 28 students in grades six through 12. If student-teacher ratios fall below those targets, the school is overstaffed. However, enrollment in Tahoe City schools has declined to the point that schools verge on being overstaffed even as their administrators struggle to employ enough teachers for a basic curriculum.
The problem will be addressed during budget workshops this summer, when district and school administrators consider allocating extra money to small schools struggling to adequately staff their facilities. ‘The small schools allocation would allow us to continue to provide a bare-bones curriculum,’ said Teresa Rensch, Principal of North Tahoe Middle School.
At North Tahoe High School, electives and higher-level offerings such as Advanced Placement courses are being edged out of the schedule because there simply aren’t enough students signing up for them. AP Biology probably won’t find its way onto the schedule next year because as yet, only two kids have expressed interest. Ceramics hasn’t been offered for two years.
However, principal Bill Frey downplayed the impact of declining enrollment, ‘Penny (Burney) and I work real hard to make sure we have enough upper and lower level courses offered,’ Frey said, ‘(District administrators) are looking at the programs that we need to offer to be a complete high school, not necessarily by the numbers. So that has helped us.’
With bulging enrollment on the Truckee side of the district, and diminishing numbers on the lake, District administrators have considered redistributing students to use facilities more efficiently. However, according to Assistant Superintendent of Business, Earl Wammack, shuffling students from one side of the district to the other would involve hefty transportation expenses.
It’s more likely that the district will alleviate crowding in Truckee by sliding a few kindergarten classes over to the former Sierra Mountain Middle School building. A balance might be struck on the lakeside by moving some kindergarten classes from Kings Beach to Tahoe Lake Elementary.
Schisms of Language, Affluence, and Culture
This year at Alder Creek Middle School, counselor Rachel Falk noticed a pattern in the lunchroom. Every day Caucasian students were sitting with Caucasian students, and Hispanic students were sitting with Hispanic students. In an effort to mix it up a bit, the counseling department assigned random numbers to all the students and instructed them to eat lunch with whomever had received numbers near theirs. Falk even gave the students conversation starters, directing them to learn the summer plans of five of their tablemates, or to meet two new people and learn their extracurricular activities. But strangely, numbers were exchanged, some students stayed home, and most kids ended up sitting in the usual places. It got so bad that kids who fudged a number or disobeyed were sent to the vice principal’s office.
‘That’s the comfort zone and how to combat that I haven’t figured out,’ Falk said.
Falk thinks Latino and Caucasian students refuse to mingle because their home lives are so different. She asserted that when most Latino students arrive home their parents are at work and, instead of homework or discussions about school, there are siblings to look after.
‘Latino kids see whites getting picked up by their parents and know there’s a difference,’ Falk said, ‘It’s a whole different way of living.’
Falk did note, however, that she was happy to see companionship between boys who play soccer together. ‘But with girls I haven’t figured out the answer,’ she said.
Alder Creek principal, Susan Phebus, attached the issue to the broader community. ‘Schools tend to mirror society and we’re becoming a very polarized society: the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots,’’ Phebus said.
According to a proposal for a poverty relief grant that was prepared in April by a committee of district board members and administrators, the number of people in Truckee who use food stamps nearly doubled in the years between 2001 and 2006. In the school district as a whole, the number of students eligible for free or reduced-price meals rose 11 percent over the same time period, with the result that nearly a third of TTUSD students received free or reduced-price meals last year.
Children from families of four become eligible for reduced-price meals when their annual family income falls below $37,000. They are eligible for free meals when their family income drops below $26,000 per year.
In the Tahoe Truckee area, where the cost of living is exceptionally high, families whose annual income rests near the federal poverty line face particular hardship. This April, the median value of a home in Truckee was $599,000. In the same month, the median home price in the nation was roughly $220,000. According to the federal guidelines, families of four whose annual income falls below $20,000 live in poverty.
Much, though not all, of the increasing number of low-income students in the district can be linked to a corresponding rise in the number of Hispanic students. Over the last 12 years, Hispanic students have risen to 28 percent of the TTUSD student population, an increase of 12 percent. However, of the five elementary schools in the district, Kings Beach and Truckee enroll the majority of Hispanic and low-income students. According to the same grant proposal, such uneven distribution can be the source of friction.
According to the report, ‘(The concentration of Hispanic and SED [Socio-economically Disadvantaged] students in Kings Beach and Truckee) poses a significant challenge as all the elementary school students merge at 6th grade into two middle schools. The coming together of these two disparate groups is not always smooth and harmonious, and the divide between poorer and more affluent students is quite wide.’
At North Tahoe Middle School, however, Rensch emphasized that she sees little or nothing in the way of blatant racism, and that when altercations do occur, they’re usually a result of misunderstandings. ‘It’s usually just kid-to-kid picking on each other, not race motivated,’ Rensch said, ‘If a Caucasian student has a run in with a Hispanic student usually it’s just pure, ‘I didn’t know better.’’
Jay Cunningham, principal of Truckee High School, said that students from different backgrounds conflict at his school, though like Rensch, he described such tensions as ‘not pervasive.’ When conflicts do occur, though, students use differences in one another’s backgrounds as fodder for abuse. ‘Citizenship status is an issue. It’s another form of bias between the kids,’ Cunningham said, ‘A common insult is: ‘your mother needs to clean my toilets.’’
Cunningham estimated that between 10 and 15 percent of Caucasian students at Tahoe Truckee High have difficulties with race and tolerance. He was more concerned, however, by what he sees as a lack of response to issues of poverty and ethnicity in the community beyond the school walls.
‘There aren’t a lot of resources available to poor people here. There are poor white people too,’ Cunningham said, ‘All this becomes school issues because kids have to be here. In the community these people can avoid each other, but in the schools they are required to be in the same place at the same time.’
No Child Left Behind Act: Can TTUSD Schools Run Fast Enough to Catch It?
This May, students across Tahoe Truckee Unified School District sharpened their pencils and braced themselves for the annual examinations of California’s Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) program. For some students who score poorly, the exams will mean supplemental math or English instruction in the fall; but in large part, STAR scores mean less to the students who earn them than they mean to TTUSD teachers and administrators, and to education officials at the state and national levels.
In 1999, the California Board of Education adopted curriculum standards that define what every California public school student should learn in each grade. Since then, standardized tests such as the STAR exams have been used to measure just how thoroughly students in California are learning the standards. Since the federal government passed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002, schools and districts whose students do not meet the achievement benchmarks defined by the Act enter Program Improvement, and risk losing state and federal funds if they do not implement reforms suggested by the state and federal governments.
North Tahoe Middle School, Kings Beach Elementary, Truckee Elementary, and TTUSD as a whole are currently in Program Improvement and are working to boost scores. However, as the district struggles to meet the demands of No Child Left Behind, some worry that the focus on standardized-test achievement is depriving educators of their ability to teach to the needs of individual students. Others contend that the increased accountability required under No Child Left Behind has broken teachers out of old habits, and challenged them to bring fresh ideas to the classroom.
At the end of April, the staff of Glenshire Elementary asked parents to describe the kind of education they would like for their kids. Kathleen Gauthier, principal at Glenshire, received a letter that included the following comments:
‘(My student) needs a teacher whose teaching structure is student-centered, allowing for some student input and choices in learning.
‘(My child needs) a teacher who creates learning that has meaning to him and connects to real life authentic stuff like project work and inquiry science – NOT workbooks!!’
A week later, during a staff collaboration meeting at North Tahoe Middle School, 6th grade math teacher, Nancy McNair asserted, ‘There are lots of pluses and not many minuses to how program improvement and standardized testing affect the job of a teacher.’
Then, as the meeting got underway, a moderator stood and began explaining proctoring strategies for the upcoming California Standardized Tests. Trying to stimulate discussion, she asked, ‘Why are we doing this testing?’ One teacher piped up, ‘Keep our jobs?’ Chuckles washed around the room.
The Struggle to Meet the Benchmarks
North Tahoe Middle School (NTMS) has been in Program Improvement for a total of five years – longer than any other school in the district. Under No Child Left Behind, it might have been required to completely restructure and could have been taken over by the state; but through the efforts of teachers and administrators – and a lack of resources at the state level – NTMS experienced no major changes this year.
Board members and district administrators describe the school as a model Program Improvement site. ‘NTMS above all, has had the most focus (toward Program Improvement),’ said district board member Bev Ducey.
‘NTMS has been proactive in taking actions recommended by the state before the state specifically says (to take them),’ said Rensch, principal of NTMS, ‘There is plenty of data to show we’re progressing in the right direction.’
NTMS has rearranged its schedule so that students who are struggling with English Language Arts and mathematics can be enrolled in up to two extra hours of either subject. The school also provides after-school tutoring and intensive instruction, and teachers meet every Wednesday afternoon to share teaching strategies, create lesson plans, and coordinate instruction between the grade levels; but somehow, it all hasn’t been enough.
Over the last three years, the proficiency rate of English learners at NTMS has hardly begun to approach the state benchmark. According to the California Department of Education, the proficiency rate for English learners in English Language Arts climbed from four percent in the spring of 2003, to 11 percent in the spring of 2006, leaving NTMS 13 percentage points shy of the 24 percent proficiency rate it would need to escape Program Improvement.
The story is similar in Kings Beach and Truckee. At Kings Beach Elementary, students are offered tutoring before and after school, a dual-immersion bilingual education option, an English development program called High Point, and one-on-one time with bilingual aides. For its part, Truckee Elementary provides tutoring before the school day, a bilingual program, and employs bilingual aides as well. Both elementary schools participate in daily ‘Universal Access Times’ mandated by NCLB. During the Universal Access Times, the students in the schools are grouped by their English ability and given at least 30 minutes of English enrichment instruction.
But as with NTMS, teachers and administrators at the elementary schools are working to bridge a large achievement gap, and not making the kind of progress required by No Child Left Behind. Since spring 2004, the proficiency of English learners at Kings Beach Elementary has climbed three percent, and is now 14 percentage points shy of the benchmark. At Truckee Elementary, scores have climbed seven percent and are nine percentage points below AYP.
Part of the lack of improvement can be traced to the way the federal government requires school performance be measured. Under NCLB, the scores of individual students aren’t tracked from year to year. Instead, the annual average scores of all students in a school are recorded. The problem is, the students in a school are always changing. Average school-wide scores jump up and down as groups of high- or low-achieving students pass through the school, and that static can cancel out any improvement that actually created by the teachers and programs in a school; but there’s another problem in the accounting as well.
Over the last two years, the scores of English learners in English Language Arts have increased; they just haven’t increased far enough. When student who are learning to speak English as a second language enter TTUSD, they end up in the grade appropriate for their age, not the grade that matches their English skills. In an extreme case, a student may enter 8th grade speaking English at a 5th grade level. AYP benchmarks say the student should test at the 8th grade proficiency level by the end of the year – that he or she should make three years of progress in one year – a heady task. According to Jessamy Lasher, District Director of Curriculum, Spanish-speaking students across the district are becoming bilingual, but their progress doesn’t register in the eye of No Child Left Behind, because that eye only sees improvement that adds up to proficient.
According to the statistics, students who spoke little or no English when they entered TTUSD are learning to speak English more fluently; but their progress may simply not be enough. In the coming years, the benchmarks will increase and new students with low English skills will enter the district. Next year, another 11 percent of English learners will have to score proficient in English Language Arts. The year after that, the bar will rise by another 11 percent.
Do the Adequate Yearly Progress benchmarks ask too much? Are TTUSD and other California districts with substantial populations of English Learners doomed to miss them? The near future is still unclear. Truckee Elementary, Kings Beach Elementary, North Tahoe Middle School, and TTUSD as a whole might meet AYP when standardized tests scores return in the fall; but in the long run the answer is almost certainly, yes.
‘I wouldn’t use the word ‘doomed,’’ Lasher said, ‘but for every student to be proficient by 2014 is statistically and developmentally impossible. We have to be accountable … but 100 percent is ridiculous.’
TTUSD Stretches its Legs, Forms a Plan to Catch the Benchmarks
When the whole of Tahoe Truckee Unified entered Program Improvement in fall 2005, district administrators and board members were neither entirely surprised, nor completely unprepared; but they were suddenly given a federal kick in the pants to close the achievement gap that had already become painfully pronounced by the time the federal program pointed it out.
Whether or not TTUSD can attain the No Child Left Behind goal of 100 percent proficiency, the district has responded to the law. This spring, the district created a strategy directed primarily at boosting the scores of Socio-economically Disadvantaged and English learner students; but also toward establishing consistent academic content – and the exams to track it – throughout TTUSD.
The district’s strategy has been given the imposing name, ‘Collaborative Inquiry Model for Improving Student Achievement.’ As tends to happen in Public Education, the name of the thing is almost more complex than the thing itself; but in this case at least, it’s worth it to sort through the name.
According to District Director of Educational Services, Dave Curry, this strategy will direct district policy in the years to come. Curry is familiar with the requirements of Program Improvement. He was principal of NTMS when the school entered the probation program, and had a hand in his school’s initial, proactive response. ‘Collaborative inquiry is really the overarching model for improvement in the district,’ Curry said, ‘It’s the plan of attack for learning.’
Simply put, the district’s ‘Collaborative Inquiry’ strategy is based on collaboration. It is based upon conversation among teachers, and between teachers and administrators. The team that formed the strategy reasoned that if educators are given time to compare notes and form strategies, and are also trained in how to do so effectively, continual change and improvement will become part of the basic workings of TTUSD.
Such collaboration time has not traditionally been available to teachers. ‘In education there are barriers to quality improvement,’ Curry said, ‘Teachers teach in isolation.’
Cathy Valle, principal of Truckee Elementary, explained that because teachers don’t physically work with their colleagues, they sometimes become ‘free agents,’ devising their own curricula and techniques; but once the new plan is in place, teachers will have less of the old leeway. The district strategy will not only give teachers time to talk; it will also give them something to talk about.
As part of the strategy, teachers and administrators have built district-wide curricula in English Language Arts, math, and social studies. A committee of science teachers will develop science standards next fall. The district standards were constructed from essential portions of the California curriculum standards. ‘There are just too many state standards to teach them all,’ Curry said, ‘By now we have a pretty good idea of what the most important state standards are, which ones will appear on the tests.’
To gauge students’ knowledge of the district standards, teachers and administrators have developed tests that are administered more regularly than the annual California standardized tests.
‘We never have in this district, nor have many other districts, sat down and created district-wide assessments that give information on what a teacher has already taught, how well they’ve taught it, and what they should teach next,’ Curry said. He went on to explain that the district’s standardized tests perform all of those functions.
Priscilla Mills, who teaches second grade at Kings Beach Elementary, praised the increased accountability. She explained that the second grade curriculum at Kings Beach includes regular assessments, and that those scores are useful.
‘Now teachers can use not just adjectives, but numbers to tell parents how their kids are doing,’ Mills said, ‘Parents can’t fool themselves.’
The district has purchased a computer program named Datawise to help organize the scores from the district tests. As of this spring, only administrators and a few select teachers have been trained in Datawise; but when the program becomes fully operational, teachers, administrators, and board members will be able to use the software to examine student performance from a number of different angles.
At NTMS, Principal Rensch has been using Datawise to examine her students’ performance on the school’s own benchmark tests. Like Mills, she praised the accuracy and clarity the numbers provide. ‘A good effective teaching tool is to use data to drive instruction, but you need a quick turn-around time and you need to be able to look at it from a lot of different angles, and Datawise let’s you do that,’ Rensch said, ‘Datawise makes the discussion really rich.’
Rensch went on to explain that with Datawise, teachers can look at patterns in scores to identify whether an individual student simply didn’t understand a concept, or whether a teacher taught a concept poorly, or even to determine if the test question itself was the source of the problem.
Assistant Superintendent Jo Wilson noted that the district’s regular assessments and defined curricula help teachers view their students without bias, explaining that any teacher can form an inaccurate impression of a student’s ability, and that those impressions can get in the way of instruction. ‘With weekly data coming back, teaching is more objective,’ Wilson said, ‘teachers can see where there’s potential they overlooked.’
But what are teachers to do if they notice their teaching methods simply aren’t working? As part of the plan, teachers are being trained in research-based instruction strategies. Currently all of California’s teachers must earn a certificate qualifying them to teach English learners. However, throughout TTUSD, teachers are learning techniques to help students learn vocabulary, strategies to make subject matter more relevant to students from a variety of backgrounds, and techniques designed to improve student literacy.
‘I learn a new way to do things every week,’ said Shirley Turner, who teaches sixth grade English and Social Studies at NTMS. Turner had just finished explaining a teaching strategy known by the acronym, GLAD, that was just being introduced to teachers at NTMS; but she was also describing the broader effects of No Child Left Behind. Turner said that the standardized curriculum hasn’t so much limited her teaching, as it has refined it. She uses essential standards to focus her lessons, and then embellishes upon them.
‘There’s more purpose to teaching now,’ Turner said.
Valle, principal of Truckee Elementary, also said that the standards – with the force of Program improvement behind them – have added focus to the classroom. ‘(Program Improvement) has given us a more directed focus on all students,’ Valle said, ‘We’re using more data about how the students are doing to drive our instruction. It’s really looking at best practices to improve instruction.’
The data from the district tests, the standards they’re based upon, and the practices teachers are using, are all fodder for discussion. During collaboration time, teachers will be able to compare successes and failures, and talk about what might work better the next time. But as yet, the actual collaboration piece of the district’s Collaborative Inquiry plan hasn’t fallen into place in every school.
‘There’s a knack to using collaboration time effectively,’ Curry said, ‘You don’t want unstructured talking. You need accountability. We’re hoping to do all that in the fall and then revisit it through the year.’
Lasher explained that the district is still working to coordinate discussion between individual schools, as well as between faculty who teach the same subject to different grades.
So far, the three Program Improvement schools have implemented the district’s Collaborative Inquiry Model most fully. At the May 23 School Board meeting, every principal in the district endorsed the plan.
Accountability: A Race Worth Running?
As Tahoe Truckee Unified reshapes itself to meet the demands of No Child Left Behind, some worry that the focus upon testing has removed some of the adaptability from public education, that educators are not stimulating individual students so much as directing them to a specific point – a score of proficient – and that as a result, students are being lost along the way.
‘Every now and then I talk to parents who are concerned about test scores but they’re definitely in the minority,’ said Kathleen Gauthier, principal of Glenshire Elementary, ‘I believe in the whole constructive approach, what are you interested in and what do you need to know, and what are you ready for…and for teachers to be responsive for that, and not have parents be like, ’oh my gosh, this is a race instead of a journey.’’ Board member, Vicki Isacowitz, echoed Gauthier’s remarks. ‘So much testing is cutting into the needs of the whole child,’ she said. ‘For the main focus of teaching to be test-based is just wrong.’
Educators point to a number of different places where their job has lost flexibility. North Tahoe High School biology teacher, Kirby Reed, spoke of the limits created by standardized curricula. ‘When you compare what we have been teaching to the standards, the standards are only part of the whole field,’ Reed said, ‘[In the standardized tests] Molecular biology and genetics are emphasized over zoology and ecology.’
According to Reed, his classes have become drier. Where he once used bear and coyote skulls for his lessons, he now discusses molecules and reactions that are too small to see. Because the material is more abstract he has a harder time engaging his students.
John Halvorsen, a former science teacher who now works as Teacher and Technology Coordinator at Truckee High, also described a conflict between standardized curricula and science classes, specifically the lab work they can involve. Halvorsen explained that standardized tests measure facts, and that although lab work provides experiences that can’t be duplicated by any book, labs are neither the easiest, nor the most efficient way to impart facts. ‘If a science teacher is a hands-on lab-driven teacher with content included as well, that teacher is going to have to back out of that to teach for the test,’ Halvorsen said.
Teachers also object to the amount of class time they have to devote to testing, and to teaching test skills. Tom LeFevers teaches English Language Development at North Tahoe High School. He estimates that he spends a month of every school year proctoring tests and teaching test strategies.
On a broader level, educators point out a disconnect between the large scope of public education policy, and the needs of individual districts. When the national perspective of No Child Left Behind meets the needs of students in Glenshire, Truckee, Kings Beach, and Tahoe City, there can’t help but be friction.
‘NCLB works for the majority of schools, that’s what it’s designed for, but the minority slips through and NTMS is in the minority,’ said vice principal of NTMS, Nauman Zaidi.
Zaidi explained that the variety of education available at NTMS has narrowed, stating that he would like to see more classes that teach vocational skills for kids who aren’t on their way to college. With wider course offerings, students who don’t test well, or who aren’t responding to the standard curriculum, could feel confident and be successful in school as well.
At relatively small schools such as North Tahoe Middle, the requirements of NCLB are edging out courses that aren’t math and English Language Arts. With a large percentage of the school in supplementary courses, there just aren’t enough students to go around.
‘The overall feeling is that (NCLB) is limiting,’ Zaidi said.
Dean Nordby, band teacher at North Tahoe Middle and High Schools, agreed. ‘More supplemental classes are a way to approach academic achievement, but they’re not the (only) answer,’ Nordby said. He explained that music has been demonstrated to increase math scores, but that with more students taking supplementary classes, band enrollment is dropping.
‘NCLB has had a huge impact on where (the band program is) in terms of enrollment. We used to have 120 kids in beginning band and now we have 30,’ Nordby said, ‘With no Child Left Behind, musicians were left behind.’
While national education legislation can cause the needs of individual students to be overlooked, it can also cause teachers to divorce their curricula from the place they teach. Reed explained that he and many of his colleagues pursued a career in science out of ‘a great concern and love of the environment.’ He lamented the fact that much of the curriculum he now teaches doesn’t bear a specific connection to the unique environment just beyond his classroom windows.
Results from this year’s round of California Standardized Tests will return in the fall.
The Money: Heading into fifth year of Basic Aid, but not yet into the black
This school year, Tahoe Truckee Unified accepted no general purpose funding from California. Instead, the bulk of the district’s money came entirely from property taxes levied in El Dorado, Placer, and Nevada Counties. As a result, the district took in approximately $5.4 million more than it otherwise would have.
Districts that are able to build their general-purpose budgets entirely out of property tax revenue are called ‘Basic Aid.’ There aren’t many of them in the state – only about 10 percent of California school districts qualify – but those districts generally have more money to spend on their students. As a Basic Aid district last year, TTUSD received roughly $9,755 per student. By contrast, the average California district received $8,150. But the times of plenty haven’t arrived just yet.
As a rough estimate has it, the next decade will see the TTUSD business office working to address a backlog of deferred expenses. ‘For a number of years this district was in a cutting mode, didn’t give much in the way of salary increases, cut a lot of programs,’ said Earl Wammack, Assistant Superintendent of Business, ‘We’re really new into Basic Aid so we’re still doing a lot of recovery.’
Board member Monty Folsom attributed the district’s historically lean budget to low student enrollment and a lack of state funding. ‘(TTUSD) has never been a real wealthy district,’ Folsom said.
In general, the number of students that attend a district determines how much money it receives. That formula works if expenses dwindle as quickly as the number of students; but at a certain point, a gap opens between the amount of enrollment money a district receives, and the amount of money it needs to provide basic academics and services. Folsom traced TTUSD’s struggle with low enrollment back into the early 1990s, but with Basic Aid status, there’s a chance that trend will change. ‘Now, with basic aid the district might be able to climb off of dependence upon enrollment,’ Folsom said.
But school budgets are complicated, and Basic Aid funds are hard to predict because they’re attached to the economy. ‘Basic aid is assessed based on the value of the houses in the school district,’ Folsom said.
Since TTUSD became a Basic Aid district in 2003, property tax revenue has increased by roughly eight percent each year; however, that percentage tends to wobble. This year, property tax revenue jumped 11 percent, but next year it looks to increase by only seven percent. As a result, it’s difficult to predict exactly when, if ever, TTUSD will be able to use Basic Aid revenue toward new programs and larger discretionary budgets.
‘Because of the economy, I don’t think it’s reasonable to look at a time frame (for escaping recovery mode),’ Folsom said.
Wammack, however, estimated that if Basic Aid revenue continues to increase by roughly eight percent, TTUSD will be able to move out of recovery mode within 10 to 15 years.
The budget for the 2007/08 school year won’t be finalized until the fall, but Wammack explained that the majority of the new tax revenue would be used to increase faculty and staff salaries. The next priority will be Program Improvement reforms and other curricular expenses, and afterwards, the district will address maintenance needs and other expenses that don’t affect a student’s education so directly.
