IN THE MIX: Grade change works

Nice job, Sonora parents.

No, not me—I’m a Sonora Elementary School parent, but I don’t get to take any credit for what these parents did nor for the fact that it is going well.

In spring 2006 a few Sonora parents, lead by now PTA President Brian Valles, decided they weren’t just going to accept that their kids had to move off to Davis Elementary School when they entered the fourth grade.

They gathered a few parents from Paularino and College Park elementary schools, the other Davis feeder schools, and began communicating with the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

They wanted to put at least fourth and fifth grade back at the neighborhood elementary schools.

This issue got hot around the time I was getting ready to send my daughter to Davis for fourth grade. When I had started at Sonora I was surprised to find it and several other district schools only went up to third grade.

I thought that was bizarre and I was worried about how my daughter would handle such a change.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one, but instead of just worry about it, Valles and the others took action.

After many meetings, studies and surveys by the district, mostly Susan Astarita, assistant superintendent of elementary education, Sonora, Paularino and College Park now offer fourth grade at their campuses. You can still choose to send your child to Davis.

After all the fears about how the change would affect the programs, the students and the teachers, everything seems to be moving smoothly at this early date.

Though I’m happy parents and students now have the choice to stay at their community school, I still have an issue with the prevalent rumor that Davis is scary. As I’ve said before, it’s turned out to be a great school and most of the parents I talk to there feel the same way.

Unfortunately those rumors likely underscored the feeling of rejection some of the Davis teachers and administrators felt when talk of grade reconfiguration began.

Teachers at Sonora and district administrators told me the Davis teachers thought parents were saying there was something wrong with them.

But from what I’ve heard around the campus the concern was not about any bad teachers at Davis, but about keeping the kids at the neighborhood school as long as possible, thus avoiding that dramatic change to a new campus at such a young age.

Director of Elementary Education Bonnie Swann said the district considered studies that, not surprisingly, showed that the more students move around to different schools the worse they do in school.

That information, along with feasibility studies that showed that the change would be, well, feasible, prompted the district to add two fourth-grade classes to each of those feeder schools.

But the addition of fourth grade came with some challenges.

The district had to figure out how they would offer students the same activities as Davis. Davis has programs like Ranch—an amazing after-school activity — P.E. and band as well as short-term after-school classes for cooking, Spanish, wood working and more.

Sonora fourth-grade teacher Michelle Allred said the schools are trying to incorporate as much as possible for the fourth graders and they are adding a science lab and a P.E. teacher at the Sonora campus.

Allred is a fan of the change and said the only difficult part has been the increased class size. She had been teaching in 20-to-1 classrooms and now has 35 students—20-to-1 ends in third grade. Despite that, she said she is happy the students are able to stay on the Sonora campus and happy fifth grade may be added.

Now the district gets to answer the question of what comes next. The plan is to see if adding fifth grade will also work at the three neighborhood elementary schools.

Swann said they are also considering whether these changes can be implemented at other elementary schools in the district. Schools like Pomona and Whittier elementary feed into Rea Elementary School which feeds into TeWinkle or Ensign middle schools.

There are also changes to be considered on the Davis campus.

It has been proposed that the campus be made into a magnate school for science or the performing arts.

I’m into the idea of turning it into a middle school and getting that middle school off the Costa Mesa High School campus.

It’s not that I have a problem with that high school, but the idea of my future 14-year-old girl hanging out where there are 17-year-olds just makes my stomach turn.

That’s a problem for another day. For now I’ll be happy my neighborhood school is starting to feel complete, and happy we have parents in our city who are willing to speak up for their kids and mine.