Villegas notes that the number of hours spent teaching will increase next year. “As part of an agreement between the district and the teachers’ union we were able to increase the instructional minutes per week by 50 more minutes beyond the minimum requirement that the state has.”He adds that he’s optimistic that the schools can meet the 2004 growth targets. “I think it’s really looking beyond that,” he said. “You’re not talking about big chunks, you’re talking small numbers. Our goal is to meet the federal requirements too. There’s no easy way of solving this. It takes hard work. It takes a tremendous amount of commitment. And, it means that every moment we have our kids in school we have to think about the urgency of teaching. We have to accept the fact that this is urgent business that we have to take care of.”Santa Paula High School met its API target for 2003 and Superintendent Dr. David Gomez says he’s happy. “Now we need to continue to improve,” he said. “I’m proud of the hard work our teachers and administrators have provided for the students. We’ve had growth every year, but I recognize that we need to continue to improve. We have a good high school and we’re going to make it into a great high school.”
Santa Paula schools improving overall in API rankings
March 31, 2004
Santa Paula News
Santa Paula’s schools have shown growth, for the most part in the Academic Performance Index (API).
Santa Paula’s schools have shown growth, for the most part in the Academic Performance Index (API).This is the state rankings of schools for academic performance of their students. The rankings come from the California Department of Education. Schools are listed on a scale of one to 10, based on API scores. A one means a school is in the bottom 10 percent in the state. A 10 puts a school in the top 10 percent. The scores from a variety of tests given in the spring of last year to students in grades 2 to 11.In the Santa Paula Elementary School District, schools rank from a low of one to a high of six. Glen City and Barbara Webster schools had the lowest ranking while Bedell Elementary had the highest.Dr. Luis Villegas, Superintendent of the Elementary District, says there is the expectation that each school will show some growth every year. “The district as a whole has been moving fairly well,” Villegas said. He noted that, since 1999, most of the schools in the district have increased their API numbers and they’ve all gone up since 2001. Villegas said they’ve made some changes that he believes will impact the test scores. One change is the adoption of a district-wide language arts program. He says another change is to make sure the same materials are used in each classroom. Other changes include an increased training level, reading courses, more assessment in the language arts area, and increased reporting at the middle school. “You have to have that infrastructure to start moving the instructional program in a new direction,” said Villegas. “I don’t think this community should be satisfied until we have our schools at 800-plus.”
