Short takes
At Capistrano, learning is a family affair
A comprehensive approach to helping children succeed in school by providing extensive school-based services for the whole family has dramatically boosted student achievement in the Capistrano Unified School District.
The CUSD Learning Link School Readiness Assessment and Interactive Centers at Las Palmas, San Juan and Kinoshita elementary schools maximize kids’ potential to excel by addressing families’ health and social needs as well as teaching school readiness skills to the pre-kindergarten students themselves.
Beginning with a single center in 2001, the district now operates three parent-child centers, located at the three lowest-performing schools in the district and serves 1,500 families a year.
Serving a population that is mostly poor and Spanish-speaking, Capistrano’s Learning Link Centers offer drop-in programs to teach parents to work and play effectively with their children. Aimed at readying children for kindergarten and supporting them once they enroll, the centers are staffed by a multidisciplinary team that includes a bilingual preschool teacher, registered nurse, speech pathologist, language acquisition specialist and a bilingual community liaison.
“There aren’t set appointment times, so families can bring their children in when it’s most convenient,” says School Readiness Director Stacy Yogi. “We have such a great multidisciplinary team to support children and parents with screening, assessment and referral to free or low-cost services for medical and dental care, counseling, parenting classes and other support.”
Capistrano has made school readiness a major priority, says school board member and CSBA Delegate Crystal Kochendorfer. “The program is innovative because it provides services to the entire family,” she says. “Learning Link teaches parents how to be their child’s first teachers. It reaches children before they enter kindergarten so their first school experiences are positive and they don’t start out behind their classmates.”
The program, which won a Golden Bell award in 2004 from CSBA for outstanding achievement in early childhood education, is funded by Title 1 funds, Proposition 10 tobacco tax money and Even Start grants.
The results have been dramatic. In September 2003, 46 percent of the district’s incoming kindergartners tested as “delayed” or “very delayed” on the Bracken Basic Concept Scale, an assessment of school readiness for very young children. All students were tested in their primary language, which was Spanish for 86 percent of the children.
After a year of kindergarten and attending Learning Link with their parents twice a week, 83 percent of the children who were assessed as delayed or very delayed in 2003, tested average for their age in 2004. “The most amazing result was that all students achieved these results after being tested in English,” Yogi says. “Not only did the Spanish-speaking students significantly raise their skills, they did so in their second language.”
Phoenix Academy helps young alcoholics rise from the ashes
After six years teaching at Marin General Hospital’s Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Center, Clara MacNamee had no doubt that drug- and alcohol-dependent students served by the Marin County Office of Education needed a sheltered school environment in order to stay clean and sober.
So when the hospital decided it could no longer afford its expensive treatment program, MacNamee set out to design her own program.
MacNamee has a doctorate in biochemistry and experience teaching all subjects during the years she brought classroom services to Marin General for the county office of education. She had no trouble creating an educationally sound academic curriculum. “But I had no models to copy when it came to creating a school for kids in recovery,” she says. “I wanted to make it small, realistic and safe. We needed to teach at the level that met each student’s individual needs.”
MacNamee took her proposal to the county office of education, and Marin’s Sober Classroom project opened its doors with a handful of students. The program was located in rented space in a former parochial school located in San Rafael.
Ten years ago, the county expanded the program, opening the Phoenix Academy at the same site but operating as a charter school devoted to students in recovery. As a charter, the school had more flexibility to, among other things, require regular drug testing, which Phoenix Principal Lisa Schwartz calls “an important tool” for keeping kids on track.
The county office of education provides teaching and administrative staff, materials and pays the rent; recovery experts at Bay Area Community Resources handle therapeutic services.
In reality, says Schwartz, both teachers and counselors are fully involved in every aspect of each student’s education and recovery. “Our counselors don’t sit in an office and wait for clients to come through the door. They’re in the classroom, they’re conducting drug tests and are fully engaged with kids and their families,” she says. “Teachers are also very involved. This is hard work that requires a lot of supervision.”
The school can handle a maximum of 25 students. Many are referred to Phoenix by local drug courts, others by mainstream schools, therapists, or parents.
Schwartz says school supporters must raise about $350,000 in outside grants and donations every year to supplement state and federal funds and keep the doors open.
“We offer very intensive family therapy, as well as individual and group therapy for students,” she says. “We have had a number of fiscal challenges. Our state funding does not support the costs of our teacher, the facility and our administrative structure,” she adds. “We do need administrative backup because many of our kids have issues.”
Incoming Phoenix students enroll as “visitors” for the first few weeks. If they test clean on the required random drug tests and demonstrate a commitment to sobriety, they are admitted as full-time students.
Phoenix requires students to agree to regular drug testing, attend at least three weekly 12-step recovery meetings of Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous outside of school hours and to find a veteran member of A.A. or N.A. to “sponsor” them in their recovery. They attend family therapy in the evenings and individual and group sessions during the day.
“It takes great courage for an adolescent to separate him or herself from peers, to learn new ways of having fun and to learn different ways to be a student and part of a family,” she says. “They are here 9 to 5 every day, plus family and 12-step meetings. It’s a lot of work.”
Schwartz says the school also requires students’ families to attend regular therapy sessions. “Our track record is clear,” she says. “Kids whose families participate have a much greater chance of succeeding.”
Veteran teacher MacNamee officially “retired” this summer. But she’s still at the school three days a week. “This project is near and dear to me,” she says. “I’d like to see schools like this in every district in the state.”
What makes the work so worthwhile, she says, is seeing students transform their lives. “We just had a visit from a former student who has graduated from UC Berkeley; another is earning $80,000 as a staff member at a retirement facility where he once worked as a student. When these students come into the program, it’s almost as if they are disabled. These kids can’t function in a regular school. But they recover so quickly. That’s what’s so inspiring.”