AVENAL -- The Reef-Sunset
Unified School District has officially responded to a Kings County Grand Jury
report that criticized the district and Avenal High School.
The written response to several
findings and recommendations made by the 2014-15 Grand Jury, which visited the
school and district last school year, was submitted to Judge Thomas DeSantos.
The district disagreed with
several findings, such as that its block schedule is too long. However, it
agreed that communication is lacking and that administrators made inappropriate
gestures during meetings.
“I think we can always do
better,” said Superintendent David East. “We definitely have room for
improvement.”
One issue where there was
disagreement is the length of classes. The district switched to a block
schedule for Avenal High last year in which classes are double the length of
the usual 50-minute sessions.
“It offers teachers the chance
to teach more deeply, which is really important, especially with the new Common
Core standards,” East said.
The jury spent time evaluating
the classes and decided that this was too long a period of time to keep
students’ attention.
The district disagrees. It said
its Alternative Governance Board interviewed students and teachers after the
schedule was implemented to see what they thought of it.
The district said the students,
“generally agreed that when there were plenty of challenging activities that
appeared well thought-out, often with real-world applications, the class was
enjoyable and they learned more.”
However, the district admitted
that students said they needed some time during the extended periods to move
around, as they said sitting in the same place for an entire period is
difficult and may lead to inattention.
Another Grand Jury finding is
that Chromebooks used in classrooms at Avenal High are a distraction to
students, and that they use these devices for purposes other than learning.
The jury said that during a
visit, members noticed that instead of doing classwork, several students were
seen using their laptops to surf social media sites, play games and more.
In their response, the district
said teachers are able to view the content students use and have tools to limit
what students have access to.
The district said it will
implement the jury’s recommendation to continue monitoring the use of
Chromebooks to make sure they are being used correctly.
Another area of disagreement is
the Grand Jury’s finding that there are too many tardies at Avenal High. In an
unannounced visit to the school last year, jury members visited classes and
noted that there were many tardy students during first period.
The report said jury members
also saw students going into class after the tardy bell rang and didn’t see any
consequences for it, despite a school policy stating that tardiness will result
in detention or other disciplinary actions.
The district acknowledged these
issues in its response. It said that the school has established various
consequences for students based on the severity of their tardiness, focused
mostly on taking away student privileges.
Students with severe cases must
attend a Student Attendance Review Board parent meeting, which will require
parents to resolve the tardiness issue or face fines or even jail time.
The district said one of the
main reasons why tardiness is still common at the school is that some teachers
aren’t doing anything about it.
“A majority of the students
relay to me that their teacher never mentions a word about their chronic
tardies and seem not to care,” said Assistant Principal Eric Smyers.
Smyers said students told him
that they would change their behavior if they were reprimanded by their
teachers.
“They (students coming in late)
will always continue to occur until students, staff, administration and [the]
community are all on board to deal with these issues together,” he said.
District criticisms
In an
evaluation of the district as a whole, the jury found that there was a lack of
communication between the district, staff and the community.
September 4, 2015
Hanford
Sentinel
By
Joseph Luiz
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