SCHOOLS: State superintendent sees how new money is being spent
Riverside’s Poly High shows how all students are being prepared for success as the state’s top education official tours honors and college preparation classrooms
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State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson tours an AVID class at Poly High School in Riverside on Thursday. KURT MILLER, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER |
Ensuring that all students – especially low-income and those learning to speak English – succeed in school was a focus of the state schools chief’s tour of Inland campuses.
“Our economy can’t succeed until we bring up all our students,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said Thursday at Riverside’s Poly High School.
After the Poly visit, he attended a town hall meeting at the Riverside County Office of Education with educators hosted by Rep. Mark Takano, D-Riverside.
“So much of our nation’s prosperity is wrapped up in this idea of education for all students,” Takano said as he described his decision to become a teacher instead of going to law school after earning his bachelor’s degree from Harvard.
Friday, Torlakson visited Citrus Valley High School classrooms in Redlands and then career technical academies at La Quinta and Palm Springs high schools.
Thursday, Torlakson and Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, visited honors chemistry, honors U.S. history, a 12th-grade expository reading and writing class that’s part of Poly’s Puente Program and an Advancement Via Individual Determination class. Torlakson said he was impressed with how teachers engage students.
Puente is a college-preparation program open to all students but targeted for Latino students.
Medina, a former Poly teacher, said it doesn’t matter whether students come from families that don’t speak English or are low-income: They still need to succeed.
“¿Cuantos hablan español?” or “How many speak Spanish?” Medina asked teacher Carley Soto’s AVID college preparation class. Most hands shot into the air. Then he asked how many were taking Advanced Placement and honors classes. About the same number, mostly the same hands, shot up again.
California’s new school funding formula – which gives districts extra money for students learning English as a second language, from low-income families and in foster care – is premised on providing better education for all.
Torlakson credited Medina as a leader in the Legislature who fought for the new funding, which is benefiting most Inland districts. It’s the first change in the way schools are funded in 30 or 40 years and is helping bring back arts, music, drama and sports, he said.
How to spend the additional money is a decision best left to local educators, Torlakson and other state officials said.
Schools such as Poly are going in the right direction, he said.
Riverside Unified School District has received about $45 million more so far, an amount expected to continue. Schools are using some of the money to fund more extracurricular activities and co-curricular programs, AVID and Puente, Superintendent David Hansen said. Some of the extra money is payingSCHOOLS: State superintendent sees how new money is being spent - Press Enterprise: