Reader Patricia Eastman offered up another idea on how City Heights schools could quash student transiency: A walking school bus. She write:
I know it might be a problem finding volunteers that would run these walking buses, but it seems the most feasible when you are talking about kids walking a mile to school. Imagine my surprise when I just googled it and found there is a national organization to help schools created their own. Here's the link:http://www.walkingschoolbus.org/
What's fascinating to me about the conundrum in City Heights is that technically, there's no reason why the kids can't keep going to the same school after they move.
Statement: "People need to realize that in this proposal that the president or CEO or somebody designated from the EDC, also I think the Chamber of Commerce, would be just basically put on the (school) board," City Council President Tony Young said at a March 30 forum in Scripps Ranch on education reform.
Determination: False
Analysis: A new campaign aims to expand the school board to include four new appointed members, on top of the five who are now elected.
Backers from a group of philanthropists, parents and others called San Diegans 4 Great Schools say the effort will stabilize
My article on the churn at Marshall Elementary focused mainly on economic factors that force some City Heights families to move a lot. But one of our readers, Russ Connelly, pointed out another big factor in student transiency rates in San Diego: Military families.
We first wrote about this issue a few years back when legislators were weighing an interstate agreement to smooth graduation requirements for military kids:
Military transfer students are so common at Farb Middle School that it trains its students as "ambassadors" to show new kids the ropes at the Tierrasanta school, which estimates that only 50 percent of its students remain from year
More on the Endangered School Nurse
The Motherlode blog from The New York Times is exploring the costs and benefits of school nurses, riffing off a troubling Parenting.com article about the possible consequences of nursing cutbacks.
Curious how this could play out here in San Diego? Check out our article about the endangered school nurse in San Diego schools, which notes:
Forced to figure out how to gut their own budgets to close an estimated $120 million deficit, principals across San Diego Unified planned to slash half of the nurses who are stationed at their schools and a fourth of the health