How should the district address declining enrollment? Will it, at some point, be necessary to consolidate or close any campuses or reduce staffing from today’s levels?
There are many reasons for declining enrollment but only a few about which the LBUSD can do anything. For example, birthrates have dropped, and the cost of housing has soared in the greater Long Beach area making it more difficult for families with children to find acceptable places to live. As a school district, it is most impossible to influence these trends. LB Unified is known as a very desirable school district because of its excellent teachers, well-maintained schools and desirable student outcomes. Still, enrollment management is an ongoing issue which the District must continue to address through a variety of strategies.
In the past twenty years, LB Unified has successfully transitioned a number of schools. Similarly, staffing has been appropriately reduced. The initial fear and sense of loss experienced by students and their families when schools were transitioned has almost always been overcome by the community’s faith in the district’s process of outreach, communication and annual reviews of staffing needs.
Smart planning also helps mitigate the effects of declining enrollment. Transitional Kindergarten (TK) is one example that will have an impact on enrollment numbers and facilities usage as the educationally sound TK idea is rolled out. Further, the existence of dual enrollment programs currently underway in collaboration with CSULB, CSDH, LBCC and Compton College will assist students who participate. This is especially true at LBUSD campuses like Mary Butler, currently used for interim housing, which could be used for dual enrollment classes. If more of our students enroll in dual enrollment classes at LBUSD schools rather than requiring students to arrange to travel to college campuses for college credits. Dual enrollment opportunities are expected to increase in the future.
In the end, working with students and their families to establish their educational goals and providing pathways to achieve those goals will help to mitigate potential problems of declining enrollment and eliminate or reduce the need to consolidate or close campuses and reduce staff.
Students are still struggling to recover from learning loss during the pandemic. What more should the district be doing to help students meet basic reading and math standards, especially low-income and English-learning students who were disproportionately hurt by school closures?
In my opinion, at this time the biggest problem with learning loss in the LBUSD at this time is the need to let parents and their students know what the district has made available to address the issue. LBUSD has been very aggressive in using pandemic funding to establish programs aimed at learning loss by focusing on remediation and acceleration strategies. Tutoring, summer school classes and after school programs provide extra instructional time to help students recapture the learning they lost during the pandemic. But many parents are not taking advantage of the opportunities. I believe the District can do a better job of “marketing” the availability of these opportunities to students and their parents.
Many of the ESSR and other special pandemic funds will be gone within a year. The district has wisely taken steps to make the programs paid for by these and similar funds ongoing. Many of these programs are tailored to our most vulnerable, low-income and English-learning students who have suffered the most mentally, academically and socially during the pandemic.
These smart strategies coupled with the innovative and successful wellness centers operating in all high school and middle school campuses are helping to meet the social and emotional needs of all our students and are recognized as important in getting students back on track after school closures. I am confident that the ongoing professional development for our teachers in these strategies needed to address learning loss will also help our students recover from the losses suffered during the pandemic.
The renovation of the Jordan High School campus started a decade ago, and some campuses are still waiting for long-promised air conditioning. What can the district do to get renovation projects moving more quickly and cheaply?
I understand the frustration that some parents and community members feel when it appears that LBUSD renovation plans are going slowly, especially since Long Beach taxpayers passed several bond measures to complete these tasks. However, the district has been careful not to overpromise or underperform with regard to its representation of facility improvements. There is a delicate balance between keeping disruption of students’ education to a minimum and continuing to improve campuses where education occurs through modernization and the installment of HVAC improvements at a campus. Indeed, the professionalism of our facilities staff has accelerated by several years our planned campus improvements. Recently, the district moved up the planned installation of heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems at several LBUSD schools in response to community concerns, last year’s heat wave and the increasing frequency of poor air quality days and extreme heat. To accomplish this, the district has secured $65 million from the state in this past year alone to make this revised schedule possible.
I am sympathetic with the concerns of community members who have not seen improvements in their schools while others have been completed. However, one school has to be first and then the next and reasonable priorities have been established based on well-thought-out criteria. The recently approved $1.7 billion Measure Q bond will enable these modernization efforts to continue as rapidly as possible.
There have been recent concerns about crime and violence at campuses, including a student bringing a gun to Wilson High School and a lockdown at Cabrillo High School because of a nearby shooting. How do you make students feel safe in class and around campus?
School safety is a top priority at LBUSD and for me. I am confident that all our campuses feel secure and safe as a result of policies adopted and implemented by the district. The tone that is set by our employees who are trained to engender that feeling of safety is especially helpful. When the principals greet students when they arrive at school, often by name, and get to know the parents who deliver them to school, safety is a by-product. Further, encouraging parental and student participation in their schools and involving parents in school decision making on issues of safety helps to create an atmosphere of safety. In the classroom, teachers, too, are trained in the steps needed to ensure a feeling of safety among their students.
The District has also developed a SEE Something, SAY Something campaign. I believe this, along with the Pulse Survey which asks questions of all fourth- to twelfth-grade students three times a year about their sense of belonging, agency and identity has created an environment where students and staff feel safe at school.
The district is also about to sign an agreement with Centro CHA, a local, highly regarded community based organization, to develop a plan for safe passage ways to and from Cabrillo High School and Stephens Middle School by engaging neighborhoods to help. This partnership is the result of an almost year-long effort called The Community-Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative in which I have been personally involved. The district hopes to grow this program to other campuses if this initial effort is successful.
If elected, what is a concrete policy change you will immediately advocate for at a school board meeting?
In 2008 the Long Beach College Promise was initiated as a partnership between CSULB, LBCC and the LBUSD. Later the city of Long Beach and the Port of Long Beach were added. This is a promise to provide a way for all LBUSD students to go to college with financial help and pathway assistance at both LBCC and CSULB.
When the Long Beach College Promise was first designed, I was on the Board of Trustees at Long Beach City College, and I had a key role in helping to create this partnership which was unique in the state and nation at the time. I am proud of all that has been achieved. Over time, this program has opened the door to college for many LBUSD students and has become a national model.
I believe it is time for the School Board to take a fresh look at the Long Beach College Promise and see if it is still meeting the academic needs of LB Unified students and if it needs to be revised. Upon election to my second term as a board member, I intend to ask the Board of Education to initiate a review of the Long Beach College Promise to encompass the current needs of LBUSD students and to align the goals of the program with the student initiatives currently being devised in the LBUSD Strategic Plan 2035. I understand the district has commissioned work on its Equity and Excellence Policy that includes a review of the Long Beach College Promise. This is a first step.
While not every LBUSD student is college bound, I believe it is essential that if an LBUSD student has a desire to go to college and has met the requirements, we need to open the door and provide the path.