I am so proud to be a resident of San Jose. With all the draconian budget cuts, layoffs in government and education it is easy to be depressed. Yet, San Jose is a shining example of a city that can still think strategically in down times while inspiring hope for a better future for all. This municipal strength is thanks in large measure to the organizing skills of People Acting In Community Together.
PACT is an inter-faith grassroots organization that empowers everyday people to create a more just community. Two of PACT’s targeted organizational goals are to close the achievement gap and reduce the drop out rate in San Jose. It was with these two goals in mind that PACT organized a San Jose delegation to take a trip to Los Angeles last week to learn more about small charter high schools achieving both.
The members of PACT realize the drop out rate for Latino youth in San Jose is abysmal and must be improved for this current generation of children or our beautiful valley will suffer immutable decline and degradation. The goals of the trip were twofold: to inspire the delegation with information about small charter high schools achieving extraordinary results and to see if there is interest by these charter schools/organizations in coming north to Silicon Valley to set up their successful “shop”.
Executive Director Matt Hammer and his PACT leaders had the vision to organize the trip. As a Santa Clara County Board of Education member I was invited to attend along with community leaders Mark Walker and Lynda Greene of Applied Materials; Chris Payne, representing his family foundation BelleJAR; County Superintendent Chuck Weis; Father Francisco Rios, Pastor of St. John Vianny Church; Alicia Gallegos, San Jose Charter School Network; Javier Gonzalez, Office of Councilwoman Nora Campos; and several community PACT leaders.
One of the schools I was most interested in visiting was Green Dot’s Oscar De La Hoya Animo High School. Green Dot Charter Management Organization was founded in 1999 by Steve Barr as a response to the 50 percent high school drop out in LAUSD. This dropout syndrome impacts mostly low income and high-risk youth, whether we are talking LA or San Jose. Barr wanted to make a difference for those students attending his small schools and leverage their successful work while influencing the LAUSD to learn from his model.
Green Dot is now serving over 7,000 Los Angeles Unified High School Youth in several small 525 student high schools including:
The Jefferson Transformation Project- This transformation project is attempting to restructure Jefferson High School, the lowest-performing school in LAUSD, into several small autonomous schools
Animo Pat Brown- Named after the former Governor of California who was one of the guiding forces in creating a world-class university system.
Animo Ralph Bunche- Named after the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize winner and an alumnus of Jefferson High School, UCLA and Harvard.
Animo Jackie Robinson- Named after the first African-American to play baseball in the major leagues in 1947.
Animo Film & Theater Arts- A former school within Jefferson High now a Green Dot Charter preparing students for school and careers in film and theater.
Animo Justice-Named by the students because education achieves social justice.
Green Dots founding five schools, including Oscar De La Hoya, just won a competitive grant of nearly $70 million dollars from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The results are nothing less than impressive. It is projected that Green Dot’s high schools will eventually graduate over 80 percent of its students and enroll over 75 percent in four year colleges.
A small high school culture crafted around safety, high expectations, commitment of faculty to the mission and vision that all students can learn at the highest of levels, student uniforms, the mantra of hard work pays off, nutritious meals, collaboration among staff, empowerment, and cleanliness will be an effective model for all children, irrespective of their SES or race/ethnicity. Unfortunately, Green Dot does not have a desire to come north for at least five more years. Their commitment is to the City of Los Angeles and its youth.
In the van on the way back to the Burbank Airport we were discussing that we can grow our own small autonomous high schools right here in Silicon Valley. We are the global leaders of innovation right here in San Jose. LA should have nothing over us, right? For goodness sake this area has spawned the computer and Internet revolutions. We can learn from Green Dot and develop our own start-up schools. The charter school movement is on our side. There would be no better use of new venture capital.
Mr. Matt Hammer, I am fired up and ready to go to our next planning meeting. We do not need to ask any other charter management organization to come to us. We will build our own. Look at the success of Rocketship, Downtown College Prep, Ace…Si Se Puede.
So Joseph, this is the crowd you’re running with?
Either you’re a moron or you’re a leftist radical – which is it?
PACT is nothing but leftist radicals trying to cloak themselves via the church.
On the PACT home page you’ll find: “Member of the PICO National Network and PICO California”
PICO’s mission?
Using “people of faith” as its foot soldiers, PICO seeks to maximize “the potential for transformation—of people, institutions, and of our larger culture”—particularly as regards health care, public education, low-income housing, and immigration.
If you google for PICO and ACORN you’ll find PICO is in bed with Acorn, SEIU, etc.
“The board of the Organizers’ Forum set aside an entire day for what turned out to be a fascinating dialogue on leadership development and training for community and labor organizations. There were a host of challenges, but in sharing the practices of various networks including DART, WORC, PICO, ACORN Canada, Acorn International, SEIU, and the AFL-CIO, … , there was just cause for some celebration of the deep commitment social justice organizations still hold for the value for developing leadership as part of the core program.”
http://chieforganizer.org/2009/05/19/leader-thinking/
Good work, Novice.
You nailed it.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupprofile.asp?grpid=7482
Same old “Old Left/New Left” Saul Alinsky mischief.
It’s just astonishing how myopic and dimwitted are the soft headed liberal stooges who bite on this stuff.
REAL religions, or at least REAL Christianity, preach that salvation is achieved through PERSONAL virtue.
One doesn’t get to heaven by being a member of a collective that goes to heaven. One has to PERSONALLY do good works.
It’s the difference between Nancy Pelosi and Mother Teresa.
Joseph,
Nothing wrong with our schools… you simply cannot take illegal immigrant children, dump them in a 3rd grade class, and expect them to survive without speaking a word of English. No school or system is prepared to do that.
Misguided praise.
There is more than enough taxpayer money being collected by our local and state governments to equip our educators with teaching English and non-English speaking students.
It’s the bureaucratic greed above and beyond the classroom that is killing any hope of California students achieving a better education. Cut the fat and give the teachers what they need to do the job.
“With all the draconian budget cuts, layoffs in government and education it is easy to be depressed” – Where have I heard this before?
I keep hearing this, but where’s the fat? Administration spending in California is far below the national average. The national student: administrator ratio is 700:1 and the California ratio is 2100:1. In 2007-08, California had the second highest ratio.
It’s easy to make general statements about “cutting the fat” but much harder to actually point to specific cuts that should be made.
Also, folks on this forum keep blaming illegal immigration for performance in schools. The impact of special education encroachment on the general fund is far more significant. While we have about $9000 per student to spend on education, the fact that special ed students can cost up to $50,000 to educate means that in reality, there is much less to spend on general ed. Funding for special ed mandates needs to be increased in order to boost the resources available to increase school performance.
Administration spending is the problem! Is the structure of the state school system efficient?
I don’t care how California compares to the rest of the nation when it comes to education spending. The question should be how does each school get the most out of the money it receives.
Paying teachers a competitive salary and providing them with the tools to properly educate our kids should be first priority and then the administration folks can worry about themselves and whether they can justify a six figure salary.
Where’s the fat?
Your message partly answers itself.
Some fat is in non-disabled students being classified as special ed. Typically, this is because the student is disruptive and ought to be expelled.
“The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.” Khalil Gibran
“Teaching is the profession that teaches all the other professions.” Author Unknown
“A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others.” Author Unknown
“When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”
Albert Shanker,
Former President
American Federation of Teachers
“a lot of people who have been hired as teachers are basically not competent”
Albert Shanker,
“The problem is we need much more moral content.”
Cornel West
“In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
Mark Twain
I much enjoyed and appreciated your comments, Mr. Di Salvo. PACT has worked hard to create schools where ALL students have access to a challenging and empowering educational experience that meets their needs. Many of our lower-income students come from families that have not experienced success in the existing school system. Yet we know from the experiences of such students in KIPP, Downtown College Prep, Rocketship, ACE, Voices, etc. that academic success is possible for these students. Let’s create more such schools and learn from other successful schools elsewhere, such as Green Dot and others in L.A.
I just wish that all those who seek to enter the dialog on education reform on this blog will please identify themselves by name. Unfortunately, anonymity too often allows people to make careless and thoughtless remarks that they might not make if readers knew who they were.
Susan Price-Jang
This just in… “faith based” PICO/PACT officially carrying water for Obama.
Barack Obama seeks divine intervention on health care reform
“PICO is aiming to distribute 50,000 door hangers in lower-income communities within the next two weeks, the group’s spokesperson, Gordon Whitman, told POLITICO. PICO meets with the administration regularly and participated in an HHS-run call for faith groups just last week.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42540.html
PACT/PICO are nothing but leftist boots on the ground.