September 15, 2006
While recent information of declining API test scores at a handful of schools in our district has been reported, there is more to that story than the singling out a few, when overall, the district’s bottom line performance has increased over the previous year. Even that conclusion doesn’t address so many other factors that teachers, students, and families face in the Newport Mesa Unified School District. Cutting through the perceived influence of affluence, in parts of our district there remains a disparity in families, socio-economics and demographics that creates challenges for educators, but also provides great opportunities for our community to respond as a family.
Having recently listened to the brief remarks by Superintendent Hubbard and Asst. Supt. of Secondary Education, Dr. Hinman at a recent PTA meeting, two things were made clear about the new leadership in this district: cooperative relationships and parent involvement are shared values and something each of us has a personal stake in if we want to see Newport Mesa be a leader in education for our students.
Partnerships and parental involvement are the two leading factors that make our district unique. We are an area rich with parent volunteer support groups like the Newport Mesa area PTAs; Costa Mesa and Newport Beach nonprofit agencies like Girls Inc. and the Boys and Girls Club (to name just a few) that are providing enrichment activities for our kids ; in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach our cities offer after school programs and youth activities as varied as its residents. And the corporations, small business owners and our Chambers of Commerce are stepping up to the plate day after day with monetary and volunteer support at our schools and with our community programs. Finally, our communities are fortunate to have a wealth of senior volunteers who read and mentor as well as teens in our high schools providing volunteer leadership to young and old!
As the Executive Director of a Newport Beach-based nonprofit, Community & School Collaboration, Inc. (C&SC) has been offering the FAST (Families and School Together) program at several school sites in the Newport Mesa Unified School District successfully graduating nearly 1,000 families since 1998! We have numbers to share, but mostly we have successful human interest stories to tell. In June of 2006 we completed yet another eight-week FAST session at the site of Pomona Elementary School. This early intervention/prevention program recently received its evaluation from the FAST National Training and Evaluation Center which employed several quantitative and qualitative measures designed to determine the parent-child relationship, a child’s behavior and performance in the educational process, the family’s knowledge and awareness of substance abuse and the stress that parents and children experience in daily life. Based on the report’s conclusion, the parent participants of the FAST program at Pomona Elementary demonstrated the following: a significant increase in their relationships with their children, parental support systems was enhanced, a decrease in unwanted behavior in the children, and expanded family knowledge about drugs and alcoholic and addictive behaviors, and there was an increase in parental involvement in the child’s school. 100% of the families participating in the FAST program offered at Pomona Elementary graduated in the eight-week program which is higher than the US average of 80%!
FAST costs the schools, taxpayers or participants nothing. It utilizes trained professionals in the education and mental health fields and it involves volunteers and partnerships with many agencies including the University of California Irvine.
So how does a small program like FAST play out in the Academic Performance Index which is the “cornerstone of California's Public Schools Accountability”? It underscores that teaching to a test is not the ultimate in achievement. It’s another example of a small piece of the success in the very fabric of community where learning is valued, where each of us step up to the table to make a difference; raising better families, raising better citizens, and ultimately raising those test scores.
Having recently listened to the brief remarks by Superintendent Hubbard and Asst. Supt. of Secondary Education, Dr. Hinman at a recent PTA meeting, two things were made clear about the new leadership in this district: cooperative relationships and parent involvement are shared values and something each of us has a personal stake in if we want to see Newport Mesa be a leader in education for our students.
Partnerships and parental involvement are the two leading factors that make our district unique. We are an area rich with parent volunteer support groups like the Newport Mesa area PTAs; Costa Mesa and Newport Beach nonprofit agencies like Girls Inc. and the Boys and Girls Club (to name just a few) that are providing enrichment activities for our kids ; in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach our cities offer after school programs and youth activities as varied as its residents. And the corporations, small business owners and our Chambers of Commerce are stepping up to the plate day after day with monetary and volunteer support at our schools and with our community programs. Finally, our communities are fortunate to have a wealth of senior volunteers who read and mentor as well as teens in our high schools providing volunteer leadership to young and old!
As the Executive Director of a Newport Beach-based nonprofit, Community & School Collaboration, Inc. (C&SC) has been offering the FAST (Families and School Together) program at several school sites in the Newport Mesa Unified School District successfully graduating nearly 1,000 families since 1998! We have numbers to share, but mostly we have successful human interest stories to tell. In June of 2006 we completed yet another eight-week FAST session at the site of Pomona Elementary School. This early intervention/prevention program recently received its evaluation from the FAST National Training and Evaluation Center which employed several quantitative and qualitative measures designed to determine the parent-child relationship, a child’s behavior and performance in the educational process, the family’s knowledge and awareness of substance abuse and the stress that parents and children experience in daily life. Based on the report’s conclusion, the parent participants of the FAST program at Pomona Elementary demonstrated the following: a significant increase in their relationships with their children, parental support systems was enhanced, a decrease in unwanted behavior in the children, and expanded family knowledge about drugs and alcoholic and addictive behaviors, and there was an increase in parental involvement in the child’s school. 100% of the families participating in the FAST program offered at Pomona Elementary graduated in the eight-week program which is higher than the US average of 80%!
FAST costs the schools, taxpayers or participants nothing. It utilizes trained professionals in the education and mental health fields and it involves volunteers and partnerships with many agencies including the University of California Irvine.
So how does a small program like FAST play out in the Academic Performance Index which is the “cornerstone of California's Public Schools Accountability”? It underscores that teaching to a test is not the ultimate in achievement. It’s another example of a small piece of the success in the very fabric of community where learning is valued, where each of us step up to the table to make a difference; raising better families, raising better citizens, and ultimately raising those test scores.
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