Students earn credits - not ZZZs - in Saturday school

By: SHAYNA CHABNER - North County Times | Saturday, December 1, 2007 9:42 PM PST ∞

ESCONDIDO - Hundreds of students and teachers are crowding the halls and classrooms of the Escondido Union High School District campuses this fall on what they call the sixth day of the school week - Saturday.

The new, unofficial school day is part of a program the district kicked off this year to raise grades and increase attendance by providing all students, in particular those who have missed school days, with the opportunity to have an extra four hours of classtime at least twice a month.

"The whole focus is to get the kids back in school because the more they attend the more they will succeed," said Johanne Demers, the attendance supervisor for Escondido High School.

Demers said the program is also meant to reinforce the district's guaranteed admissions partnership with Cal State San Marcos. The agreement - signed with the university last fall - says that all Escondido students, beginning with this year's freshmen class, who meet attendance and academic requirements will have a spot saved for them at the school.

"The kids get the instruction that they missed, and the district gets (higher overall attendance)," she said. "It just balances out."

Students who have missed school days in the past and then attend the Saturday school program, Demer said, wipe the absence from their record and make up the lost school day for the district, raising its overall average daily attendance for the year.

Districts receive the majority of funding from the state every year based on average daily attendance from the previous school year. The district receive $36.16 for each student who attends school for at least four hours.

Last year, the attendance rate among the district's three comprehensive schools averaged about 95 percent. District officials said the goal is to raise it to about 97 percent.

The Saturday program, educators said, is one way of raising average daily attendance. The district receives $36.16 for each student who attends a Saturday session.

At Orange Glen High School, where the program has been in place since the start of the school year, Principal Diego Ochoa said his campus has already racked up more than $22,000 in additional state funds for next year based on Saturday attendance figures. He said the school is on pace to wind up with more than $100,000 in extra attendance money by the end of the school year.

That is not to say, however, that students who have missed school days are the only ones who show up.

Diego said that nearly 1,200 additional student have come to the program just to take advantage of the one-on-one time with teachers, extra hours with the course material and time on campus.

On any one of the Saturday sessions, students have the opportunity to work with about 10 different teachers covering a variety of subjects. On Saturday, for instance, Orange Glen students worked through their chemistry, history and English material, while their peers at Escondido High covered equations.

Escondido High's Saturday program was held for the first time this weekend. San Pasqual High School expect to have its program up and running in January, school officials say.

"It's great," 15-year-old Jacqueline Corona, a freshman at Orange Glen said of the program. "There is almost no talking, and if you raise your hand, there are tutors to answer your questions."

Corona said spending Saturday morning on campus has become part of her normal routine, and that she has already raised her grade-point average a whole letter grade by attending the weekend classes. Her focus, she said, has been on algebra and biology.

"(Other students) should go to get their grades up," she said. "The time goes by really fast."