UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
Seeking excellence
 Bad schools vs. good schools not a solution January 21, 2007 Whatever its faults, the federal No Child Left Behind Act does not require kicking students out of their good neighborhood schools so students from bad schools can transfer there. But the act doesn't prohibit it either, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education. The department does, however, expect districts to exercise “common sense,” which the San Ysidro School Board exercised last week. It directed that residential students, not transfer students, get priority in school assignments. The opposite had seemed a real prospect. Under the federal law, students in schools that repeatedly fail to meet the act's minimum test scores may request, and must get, transfers to passing schools. Of this district's seven schools, five are failing. That leaves only two for transfer students: Ocean View Hills Elementary and Sunset Elementary. Both are now overcrowded, particularly Ocean View Hills. So in August, Ocean View Hills families enrolling children for the first time were told they might not stay at Ocean View Hills. If class space was short, those who had registered earliest would get priority. Since that meant transfer students might supplant neighborhood students, Ocean View Hills parents erupted. As parents have for eons, they chose the neighborhood in part for its school. Where would their kids go? The federal act prohibits transfers from a good school to a bad one. For sure, the two good schools could never hold more than 3,000 students eligible to transfer from the bad. Size itself is another concern. As Superintendent Tim Allen put it, “If too many students go to the good school, then whatever was good about that school is negatively impacted.” Ocean View Hills is already plagued by a surge of physical violence and purple language on the playground. Families with the means to live near good schools shouldn't be penalized for it. Families without those means shouldn't have to suffer rock-bottom schools either. The quick solution for Ocean View Hills is the dreaded portable classroom. The preferable solution is making failing schools passing schools. The scores needed right now are distressingly low: about 24 percent of students testing proficient or advanced in English and math. Except for Ocean View Hills, most students in this border district are English-learners, proficient in neither subject. They don't have to stay that way. Or transfer. The federal law allows an array of supplementary education services, such as tutoring, that work – and would work better if allowed before student transfers. Fortunately, a San Ysidro School Board once riven by pettiness has united to institute college-prep and gifted programs in failing schools. It offers the county's highest pay to get qualified teachers. It hired Superintendent Tim Allen, whose “biliteracy” program for Spanish and English speakers is working wonders. But Allen departs on Jan. 31. Program continuity and progress will depend on the priorities set by the board, which just wisely settled one, and the next superintendent, the fourth in five years. Encouragingly, board members seem keenly aware of that. | 
