Proposed Bayview school: response to my query

The Coalition of Essential Schools posted on its blog a long response to my query about the fact that a new Bayview school would harm nearby schools. It's odd that the response keeps citing a recent San Francisco Magazine article about the Bayview, because the whole point of that article was that the Bayview is rapidly losing families.

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From the CES blog (my response posted there is pasted below):

More on the Bayview Essential School of Music, Art and Social Justice

The Problem of Declining Enrollment in SFUSD and the Academic Achievement Gap

The problem of declining enrollment in SFUSD is a huge and it has been so for several years. This problem is not unique to San Francisco, but S.F. is unique in that according to a recent report by Coleman Advocates, "Families Struggle to Stay: Why Families are Leaving San Francisco and What Can Be Done," currently SF has the smallest child population of any US city. Of those who leave, the majority, 62%, are low or middle income and 64% are people of color. It is no surprise why they leave — low performing schools and the lack of affordable housing is driving them out. Of the families that do remain, many are voting with their feet and enrolling their children in schools outside of the unified public school district, including private independent schools as well as public charter schools. So not only are families leaving at high rates, those who remain are clearly dissatisfied with the kind of education their children receive within many district schools. Recently school closings due to lack of enrollment have been in the news, but school closings are not only based on drops in enrollment they are also based on low performance. These schools are failing their students and adding to the already dramatic achievement gap that is well documented between African American students and others in this city.

Bayview: Highest Density of Children Being Underserved
But despite having low performing schools, gang violence, the highest infant mortality rate of any zip code in California, according to U.S. census data, the southeast area of S.F. drew more families than any other part of the city during the last two decades with 62% of San Francisco's African American school aged children living in Bayview-Hunter's Point alone.

CES in Partnership with Community
It is within this context that the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) is collaborating with a community advisory board made up of Bayview-Hunter's Point parents, youth and community members to design, plan and open a new small high school in the fall of 2007. We were approached a year and a half ago and we were given compelling reasons to get involved in this community. These reasons, the alarming drop-out rate, the high rates of truancy, violence and drug addiction among youth, continue to be all the right reasons to invest more than $500,000 into this project. We gave our word and created a partnership with the Bayview community to plan and design a small school that would provide a quality educational experience that prepares youth to not only earn a high school education, but also open pathways for them to enter and be successful in college. Presently, almost 37% of Bayview residents over the age of 25 don't have a high school diploma and only 11.6% hold a college degree according to an article in San Francisco magazine.

Committed to Working with the District
CES and the community advisory board of the proposed school are committed to collaborating with the school district to establish the right conditions for the Bayview Essential School of Music, Art and Social Justice (BES) to successfully open and fulfill its mission. The school's mission is to engage, educate, and empower Bayview youth to transform their lives while positively contributing to the betterment of their community. Research demonstrates that small schools can re-engage urban youth in their learning process, help to reduce violence and have the highest potential of creating community partnerships used to support youth in and out of school.

Benefits to Families, Community and City
Truancy and drop-out rates of Bayview youth are creating a population of severely uneducated and unemployable youth. Our goal is to change that trend and graduate BES students as artists, scholars, teachers and engaged citizens and that would greatly benefit their families, the community and city of S.F.

Freedom to Choose Quality Education
If families who live in southeast San Francisco feel that the schools their children presently attend are meeting their needs, I am sure that they will not choose to pull them out of educationally sound environments and send them to a new small high school that they'd have to take a chance on. Only those families whose children are falling through the cracks in the already existing schools and are being under-served would most likely choose to send their children to a different environment. Doesn't that make sense? Don't we all want our children to get the best quality education possible, now? Or maybe we should make these families wait until the people in charge figure out how to reform the schools that have been failing their children for the last several decades.

Mara Benitez
Senior Director of School Development
Coalition of Essential Schools
Posted by Mara Benitez at 07:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's the response I posted (subject to their approval):

But Bayview schools are still losing enrollment, and the same San Francisco magazine article described families' leaving the Bayview to raise their kids in the suburbs.

So this may be accurate:

"...62% of San Francisco's African American school aged children living in Bayview-Hunter's Point alone..."

...but the population is still not that high, the population of African-American children in Bayview is dropping, and the schools are not full.

So a new school will undeniably harm the nearby existing schools. This explanation doesn't clear up that concern at all.

I am not comfortable with an out-of-town organization coming into our school district and doing harm to our existing schools. I'm also not comfortable with the putdown of our current schools and the supremely confident assumption that an outside organization will automatically do so much better. And I don't think the teachers and administrators currently dedicating themselves to a very challenged population in the Bayview schools deserve the disparagement that this explanation conveys.

This whole attitude — an outside organization coming in boasting of its ability to do so much better than the existing schools and teachers — reminds me very much of Edison Schools, except without the profit motive.

— Caroline