Shared from the 2/7/2016 San Antonio Express eEdition

AGENDA 2016

INNER-CITY DISTRICT KEY TO AREA’s SUCCESS

Most graduates from SAISD schools aren’t college-ready

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Jens Magnusson / Imagezoo / Getty Images
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Lisa Krantz / San Antonio Express-News

SAISD Superintendent Pedro Martinez talks with fourth-grader Nathan Sutherland-Trevino on the first day of the Young Men’s Leadership Academy, the city’s first public all-boys school. Such programs are needed to help students in the district overcome a variety of challenges.

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Express-News file photo

Parental involvement is key to improving outcomes in the district as the number of PTAs and PTOs at its schools dwindles. Parent Rudy Martinez participates in a gathering hosted by the district called Fathers In Action at the Alamo Convocation Center last year.

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Kin Man Hui / San Antonio Express-News

Educator Priscilla Lastrapes interviews at a SAISD job fair at the Convention Center on July

18. A big problem for the district: the many teachers it loses to other districts.

Many challenges are facing the San Antonio Independent School District as it moves forward with an ambitious plan to become a national model for urban school districts, one in which students succeed and become vital members of the workforce.

Some of the biggest obstacles in the path of success for this inner-city school district of 53,700 students — 93 percent of whom are in families that live in poverty — have origins outside the classroom.

These underlying factors are an undeniable constant. They cannot, however, be the cause to throw up hands in surrender. Simply, the district must find a way to teach the children it has well or San Antonio economic fortunes will be forfeited — a dynamic that will play out throughout the state.

More money into programs, new innovative programs, and recruiting the highest caliber of teachers and administrators are key. But, as this Editorial Board embarks on its focus on SAISD in its Agenda 2016 coverage, it’s important to understand these outside factors — if only to craft programs specifically to help students overcome their unique challenges. For starters, many SAISD families lack the basic necessities many of us take for granted, such as food, shelter, medical care and full-time employment at a living wage. These issues often translate into high student mobility, truancy and dropout rates. Hungry and sick children who are in need of medical attention, eye exams or dental work are a disadvantage when it comes to learning. Children who qualify in the district get a free breakfast and lunch, but weekends and long holidays still pose a problem. These issues take their toll on the educators who often work extra-long days and spend money out of their own pockets to meet the needs of their students. Only about half of the district’s 3,300 teachers have been in the district longer than 10 years. Despite a competitive salary scale, SAISD often loses teachers to other school districts. In SAISD, families are constantly on the move. The district has a mobility rate of 30 percent. That compares to 19.2 percent in the Northside ISD, with a student population of 105,000, and a rate of 17.7 percent in North East ISD, which has 67,500 students. Parental involvement in education is key to a child’s economic success, but how can success be possible when the parent is juggling multiple low-wage jobs and the family’s housing situation is iffy?

Graduation rates in SAISD are improving. They have gone from below 60 percent to 80.8 percent in the last eight years, but, still, only 3 percent of students are college-ready. Approximately 60 percent of SAISD students need remedial classes when they go on to college. The national average is 26 percent.

Volunteers and mentors working with the concept of bringing communities into schools are working to bridge some of the achievement gap, but there is a great need for expanded services. The district could benefit from creating more community schools — a growing national movement toward using schools to connect students and their families to academic, health, social and other essential services.

The district has one community school, Wheatley Middle School. The fledgling program, made possible through a federal grant, offers after-school tutoring, mentoring, and academic and enrichment clubs.

More students in the district should be afforded the same options.

Perhaps one of the most serious issues in SAISD is the lack of affordable housing. In the last year, the district has identified 3,000 students who are homeless. The district does not take a census of homeless students and keeps track only of the cases in which the student informs the district of a homeless status.

The homeless estimate includes cases in which multiple families are crammed in single-family dwellings and an entire family shares a single bedroom.

Susan Castro, an elementary school teacher on the executive board of the San Antonio Alliance of Teachers and Support Personnel, recently had a student who was living with her dad and five siblings in the family car — and then the car was repossessed. The child has fallen off the radar and is no longer attending that school.

There is a dire need for more affordable housing within SAISD. Much of the new housing construction in the district has occurred in the downtown area and is not targeted for families with school-age children.

The San Antonio Housing Authority has a waiting list of 21,000 applicants. There are plans for more public housing units within SAISD, but it will not be enough to meet demand.

The quality of the schools also needs to improve if SAISD is going to gain more public housing. Guidelines for HUD housing funds have changed and now take into account the success of the schools in the neighborhoods where it will be located.

The private housing that is scantily available is beyond the reach of many SAISD families. The going rent for a house in the school district is about $1,000 a month, according to the San Antonio Board of Realtors. Families living in poverty cannot afford this.

Raising the earning potential for families is crucial in a community where holding down multiple jobs is not unusual. Jorge Montiel with COPS/Metro Alliance has been meeting with local employers, including SAISD Superintendent Pedro Martinez, to help raise the minimum wage of the district’s lower-level workers to $15 an hour.

Equally important is addressing the education needs of adults in the community who lack a high school diploma or GED and need access to basic literacy programs.

Access to such programs is beneficial on many levels. Studies have tied a child’s success in school to a mother’s reading level. Parents who have a high school diploma or GED are more apt to take an active role in a child’s education, according to the American Council on Education.

If parents’ education level can be improved and they can gain better-paying jobs, they won’t have to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet, and they can become involved in their children’s education. At the same time, older children won’t be pulled into duty as caregivers for younger sibling and can devote more time to their studies.

It all sounds relatively simple, but lining up all the pieces of this puzzle can be difficult. Often, parents are not engaged in their children’s schools because they don’t know how to get involved, not because they have no interest.

COPS/Metro is hiring someone next month to work in the Edison High School area to organize parents from the schools that feed into that high school so they can develop a voice in their community. The strategies are similar to those used decades ago to organize church communities.

Montiel expects this campaign may be a bit more difficult because of the lack of stay-at-home moms. Still, he is optimistic that by encouraging parents to unite, it will strengthen neighborhoods, open lines of communication with local school officials, and increase their involvement in the schools.

In some communities, PTAs play a strong role, but in SAISD, parent teacher associations are on the decline. A few years ago, there were about 60 PTA or PTOs in the district’s 90 campuses; now there are only 40.

We encourage growth in this area because this will build stronger schools and empower students to succeed. Everyone benefits.

All of us — including taxpayers who do not have school-age children — have a vested interest in what happens in our public schools.

It’s a matter of economics.

If we want to develop an educated workforce that will promote a healthy economy, we need to work as a community to remove some of the obstacles standing in the way.

SAISD is moving in the right direction. The district has hired a dynamic new superintendent with an ambitious plan that includes focusing on literacy in pre-K through third grade, increasing college readiness, addressing the needs of the district’s advanced students, and providing more training for teachers to stem their exodus from the district.

Superintendent Martinez’s five-year plan for the district has energized the SAISD community and others. He has already garnered a $2 million commitment from the H. E. Butt Foundation to help underwrite some of his innovative programs, and the district is working with other area philanthropic groups to secure additional funding to get them all launched.

At a recent San Antonio Chamber of Commerce breakfast, more than 300 people showed up to hear Martinez lay out his vision. He wants SAISD to be a District of Innovation. Chamber officials had expected only about 100 people to RSVP.

The enthusiasm for improving education in the inner city is invigorating. We encourage everyone to attend one of the many upcoming forums where Martinez will be discussing the district’s five-year plan.

The Legislature, which is waiting for the shoe to drop at the Texas Supreme Court on the constitutionality of school funding, will need to step up however that case is decided. But it and other levels of government must also address all the underlying issues that make learning difficult.

In fact, we all need to do our part to help SAISD students succeed. If they do, the economy and the quality of life in our community soar in equal measure.

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