GAY GEISER-SANDOVAL -- Educationally Speaking

Red alert! Supai trips -- Costa Mesa High School’s senior class

outings, as well as junior high trips to Washington, D.C., may be a thing

of the past in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

It’s unclear whether elementary school treks to outdoor school or

Astro Camp are affected. When we went to Washington, D.C., we learned

about law, the judicial system, library science, political science,

diplomacy, theater, colonial economies, clothing design, inventions,

music, war, weather, physical fitness and heat exhaustion. Outdoor school

encompassed dance, cooperative living, astronomy, botany, writing,

biology, hiking, self-confidence and more.

Board policy currently requires such trips to be tied specifically to

the curriculum of a course. However, as is often the case with secondary

school, a trip should encompass learning from more than one subject area,

and the availability of the trip shouldn’t be tied to taking a specific

course. So, if you participated in such a trip and think they should

continue, ask the School Board to change this policy. The School Board

meets today and on June 27 at the Education Center at 7:00 p.m. Or write

or call them with your concerns.

***

My recommendation for your summer reading list is “And Still We Rise:

The Trials and Triumphs of Twelve gifted Inner-City High School

Students,” by Miles Corwin. Instead of focusing on the gang kids, Corwin

followed those in the “hood” who were trying to make it out through their

education. The insights go deeper than the kids’ lives, as he follows

teacher and administrative challenges and conflicts.

Although our school district isn’t in South Central Los Angeles, some

of the human drama is apparent here. While parents of students should

take more responsibility for their children’s education, I wonder what

that means to the kids who spend their time away from school in foster

homes, with no parental support. I wonder how we, as a school community,

can help to fill the void for those students who don’t have parental

support. Or should those kids who have already been abandoned by their

parents suffer the ultimate consequences for their future, too?

Corwin raises the issue of who should be admitted into good colleges,

because the senior class that he followed was the last class to benefit

from affirmative action. He points out that while admission preference

for race was eliminated, it is not eliminated for those with political

connections. Many schools have a preference for children of alumni or

kids from underrepresented states.

The problem with an admission process based upon grades and test

scores is that schools and kids’ backgrounds are not equal. So a student

who grows up in a home without books or newspapers does not have the same

reading and vocabulary skills to score well in English classes and on

college entrance exams. Some students have extensive prep classes for

test, while others have none. Some schools have extensive advanced

placement classes and stringent curriculum, while others do not. Some

kids must work long hours outside of school, while others have more time

to study.

These same issues apply as early as the elementary school level, when

certain tests are used to allow entrance into the district GATE program.

How does a school determine which student gets into a certain academy or

other program with limited space in junior high or high school? How often

is a grant received for helping the less privileged kids, and then used

for the more privileged? Admission into such programs could have an

effect on admission into other classes or programs. It could ultimately

affect college admission. When do we, as a district, try to level the

playing field? If we don’t offer extensive help at the elementary or

junior high level, how can we expect a child to qualify for the stringent

entrance requirements to get into our UC system?

GAY GEISER-SANDOVAL is a Costa Mesa resident. Her column runs Tuesdays.

She can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] .