Over the last year, parents, teachers and administrators representing 10 Point Loma cluster schools have been hammering away at the goals and means to improve quality of education to remain competitive with nearby private and charter schools.
The effort culminated on Thursday, June 7, as about 30 Point Loma Cluster Council members met at Correia Middle School, unanimously adopting a strategic plan with 21 goals and 87 tasks designed to “provide the highest quality option for all students and stakeholders” in the area, according to the council’s mission statement.
Schools affected by the plan include Point Loma High, Correia Middle School, Dana Middle School, Barnard Elementary, Cabrillo Elementary, Dewey Elementary, Loma Portal Elementary, Ocean Beach Elementary, Silver Gate Elementary and Sunset View Elementary.
“We will be a model of educational excellence,” said Richard Glover, cluster council member and parent of two students at Silver Gate Elementary. “None of it is going to be easy.”
The road began with a meeting on June 8, 2006, during a cluster meeting centered on K-8 reconfiguration. The discussion spurred a movement for change, Glover said.
Currently, kindergarten-through-fourth-grade elementary schools feed into fifth and sixth grades at Dana Middle School, while seventh- and eighth-graders transition to Correia Middle School. Point Loma High is the only high school in the cluster.
What started as a conversation over reconfiguration soon became a movement toward unification, Glover said.
A year’s worth of monthly meetings produced a 46-page document that addresses specific goals and targets, including: providing each child with a personal laptop, online education with “digital lockers” and a project-based learning environment within the next three years, according to language in the plan. Within that time, the cluster council plans to offer students the education, skills and values necessary to compete at the global level, said Matt Spathas, Point Loma cluster council member.
Spathas founded the Internet-based educational resource center www.ibrary.com.
According to Spathas, it’s important for Point Loma cluster schools to use the latest technology to educate students and the community about integrating digital literacy into the curriculum.
He said preparing students with a “21st-century toolkit” will help them compete in highly technological fields in the future. These are skills that are needed today, he said.
“If you came to me today and said, ‘I’m not digitally literate'”¦ I can’t hire you,” Spathas said.
He added that if the cluster wants to remain competitive with other schools in the area and produce students with a competitive edge in future employment markets, parents and administrators must create a sense of urgency for placing technology in students’ hands.
“We give you free lunch if you can’t afford it and we’ll give you free broadband if you can’t afford it,” he said.
Paying for the technological advantage to thrust Point Loma cluster students into the 21st century remains a steady challenge.
PLCC members plan to host several fund-raisers ” including a 5-K walk-a-thon ” to jumpstart fund-raising for a Point Loma Cluster Council Foundation, said Teresa Drew, PLCC finance committee member and parent.
A date for the 5-K walk has not been set.
With legal resources provided by San Diego Unified School District, the PLCC will take the first steps toward establishing the foundation and begin financing its vision within the next few weeks, said Drew.
The grassroots effort by parents and administrators has brought together resources to counter plummeting enrollment in city schools, which, according to the district’s Web site, has been on the decrease since 2000-01. Enrollment has shrunk because of changing demographics and slower birth rates over the last 15 years, according to the district Web site.
Emerging private and charter schools that provide parents with more choices for their child’s education have also contributed to decreasing enrollment, thus spurring the need for change at the grassroots level, said assistant superintendent Nellie Meyer.
“Because San Diego has such a competitive school-choice environment, it really pushes us to think innovatively,” Meyer said.
Part of that innovation, Meyer said, involves getting parents and community members more involved in education, especially when it comes to information communication technology, she said.
However, it’s not just state-of-the-art technology and a facelift that has these cluster parents excited about the future.
For Heather Lutz, who has a child attending a cluster elementary school, the incentive lies in the security provided by a close-knit community, she said.
“My child will have this experience of being part of a very large family, which will make the learning experience safe, so they can relax into learning,” Lutz said.
The next PLCC meeting is scheduled for Monday, June 18, at Sunset Elementary, from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
For more information, visit www.pointlomacluster.com.