EUSD gets homework list for new school year

By: DAVID FRIED - Staff Writer | Thursday, August 18, 2005 11:22 PM PDT ∞

ESCONDIDO ---- On the same day Escondido elementary students headed back to class, Escondido Union School District trustees also returned from their summer recess Thursday. And the board learned at its first meeting of the academic year that it has several assignments ahead.

First on their "to do" list will be monitoring the completion of Reidy Creek and Bernardo elementary schools, which were supposed to open this week.

Winter rains had delayed construction, and the district decided last month to divert some 1,000 students who would have attended the new schoolhouses to four other campuses until construction is completed.

Mike Kant, the districtís facilities director, told the trustees that, while administrative and classroom facilities are almost complete, crews continue pouring concrete for culverts and hooking up sewer and electrical lines. The trustees will receive updates at each of their bi-weekly meetings.

The board also considered updating its policy for letting the public utilize its facilities. The new policy includes a requirement that any group with permission to host events on district grounds must notify the administration of any other organizations that will participate and their reason for being there.

The added clause comes after the Mexican Consulate participated in a civic fair last May at Grant Middle School. The event was sponsored by the city and hosted by Palomar College. Board President Joan Gardner had complained that the consulate, which was there to issue identification cards to Mexican nationals, had no business operating on a public campus.

The board will vote on the policy at its next meeting next.

Also on the list of fall tasks will be keeping track of student test scores. State officials released preliminary scores on state standardized tests earlier this week, and the district saw its passing rates in English rise 3.7 percent over last year, while passing rates for math rose 4.2 percent, according to Deputy Superintendent Jennifer Walters.

Those gains, Walters said, were more or less evenly spread across demographic groups, including English learners, low-income students and English-speaking students.

They also came in a year when the state raised the passing bar by more than 10 percent in each subject.

"We still have a ways to go," Walters said. "But what I can tell you is our studentsí achievement is definitely improving."

Another task the trustees will have this fall is considering a proposal to create one unified school district out of the 19,000 student elementary district, the 7,900-student Escondido Union High School District and the 570-student San Pasqual Union School District.

On Thursday, trustees received a report by the Sacramento consulting group School Services of California that was prepared at the request of the high school district, which paid for the study.

Both Escondido Union and San Pasqual serve as feeder districts to the high school district. The elementary districts had provided information for the study, although neither board was enthusiastic about the proposal.

Superintendent Mike Caston reminded the board at its meeting that the study was by no means comprehensive.

"The unification study only studies the fiscal ramifications and did not look at any other ramifications," Caston said. "If this were to go anywhere, we would definitely need to do other studies as well."

The report estimates that a unified district would receive an additional $10.2 million a year in school funding above the combined operating budgets for each of the individual districts.

But unification would also bring some costs of its own. For example, the report estimates it would cost about $2 million to bring three disparate pay scales in line with one another.

And a unified district would also need to find administrative offices large enough to accommodate the larger management staff.

Unifying the districts would require voter approval, and wouldn't appear on a ballot until at least spring or fall of 2007, according to the study. Trustees for the high school and San Pasqual districts received the same report earlier this month. All three boards tentatively plan to meet on September 13.

Contact staff writer David Fried at (760) 740-5416 or dfried@nctimes.com.

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