It is that time of year again. Summer is winding down and thousands of students in San Diego County are returning to school. In Alpine we are excited about the prospects for another school year. Our campuses are among the most beautiful and well maintained in the state, and our teachers are excellent professionals who are eager to get their classrooms in full swing.
Once again, we are starting the year taking a look at the bottom line. How did we perform last year? Did our students improve over the year before and are they getting a top quality education? The results of the state testing program, STAR testing, say that we did a very good job in the last school year. The performance of our students was excellent. In English Language Arts the Alpine students’ test scores improved over the previous year in every grade in the District. As we analyzed the results from the STAR test we discovered that every group within the district improved across the board in Language Arts. This was not isolated improvement. It was across the board improvement by everyone. Every grade exceeded federal performance requirements.
For the last four years we have been utilizing a way of teaching language arts that benefits from the collaboration of all the teachers as they plan together, discuss each child’s progress, and seek to remediate weaknesses in a child’s performance in reading as soon as possible in their school career. This model, called ExCEL, is showing great results. Our fourth and fifth grades did especially well on the English Language Arts test. In many classrooms nearly all of the students achieved at the highest levels on the test.
Our mathematics scores were also impressive. Students’ scores improved in 14 out of 22 areas and, the students’ performance was well above the federal requirements. One very difficult area in math is eighth grade algebra. This subject used to be taught in ninth grade but is now taught in eighth. Each year more and more of the eighth grade students take algebra. This past year the percentage of students who achieved proficient status dropped slightly but we anticipate this is an area where we and the students will continue to improve in the future.
The STAR results are very impressive. They are a tribute to the efforts of the students and teachers, the cooperation and involvement of parents and place Alpine schools in the upper echelon of school districts in the state. We, as a community, have always had great pride in our Alpine schools and there is reason to continue that sense of pride.
Our pride and excitement is tempered by the very dire budget situation. We will be attempting to carry on programs and services with considerably less money over the next few years. In the last couple of years the Alpine School District budget has been reduced by $2 million. This is from a combination of declining enrollment and state budget cuts. These cuts could be devastating to the district were they not mitigated somewhat by the cut in pay that all the employees agreed to for this school year. Last year the district instituted bus fees to help the situation. Those fees continue this year, although they are slightly reduced. Another minor step the school board has taken to attempt to meet our budget requirements is to begin charging a fee for the use of our school facilities. Many community groups use the schools’ classrooms or auditoriums for meetings. The use of electricity, etc. for these meetings actually costs the district about $10,000 per year. Starting this fall, groups will be required to pay a minimal fee for the use of the schools’ facilities. This will help us to maintain the use of district funds for schools’ needs.
Each school principal welcomes your ideas and comments about his/her school. If you ever have concerns or just want to comment on the Alpine schools please do not hesitate to contact me or the school’s principal. The Alpine schools are a part of the Alpine community and we welcome your involvement.
Greg Ryan, Superintendent