By Catherine Nichols
Superintendent of Glendora Unified School District
There is a sacred trust, a covenant, which local school districts maintain with parents, community members, and business people. Glendora Unified embraces that trust and has fulfilled our part of the covenant.
Glendora Unified School District is committed to preparing our students to meet the future with confidence.
The goal of education is to tap into the talents of each student and create an environment where they flourish, individually and collectively. Student academic success is part of the covenant we embrace.
During the last 5 years, the District increased its API test score 65 points; rising steadily from 786 to 851. All Schools in the District have an API over 800 and several have scored over 900.
The path to the future appears bright as we connect our students to their passions, providing multidimensional learning that is personalized.
Student success in academics, the arts, music and athletics are the focus of Glendora Unified. Glendora High School was among the top 5 percent of high schools in the nation named by Newsweek Magazine in both 2008 and 2009.
Success builds upon success and the positive results of hard work by teachers, administrators and support staff is apparent.
Of the nine comprehensive schools in Glendora Unified, six schools have become California Distinguished Schools and one school has been named a Title I Achieving School over the past five years.
California Business for Education Excellence and Just for the Kids named five schools in Glendora Unified for outstanding success in raising student academic achievement!
The Foundation for Glendora Unified Schools has donated more than $700,000 to the district over the past two years.
Glendora Unified School District has worked to preserve and nurture the dreams and aspirations of our students.
Until now, although battered by devastating cuts to education, Glendora Unified has persevered with a focus on our priorities: increased student achievement, closing the achievement gap and creating a 4-year college culture.
But California schools are at risk. There is only a very thin veneer that is keeping GUSD - and most school districts in the state - on track.
Each student, whether they are in the first grade or eleventh grade, has only one year to learn that particular curriculum, and we cannot let them down.
Through this devastating fiscal crisis, the worst since the Great Depression, we have feverishly sought to maintain programs, services and support to our students.
School districts statewide have cut funds for textbooks, reduced personnel, depleted reserves and closed schools.
Now the Governor has proposed additional cuts to education. My district of 7,000 students has 10 million dollars less this year, a 20 percent reduction in funds, to educate our students.
We have pulled the “infrastructure” of our school district apart to keep cuts as far away as possible from our precious students.
We have fulfilled our part of this covenant. We have tenaciously maintained high expectations for our students to close the achievement gap, increase student achievement and create a 4-year college culture, but we are on the precipice.
Education must once again become a priority for our state, not in lip service, but in resources. It is a shame and shameful that students in California receive less money per child than students in Mississippi or Alabama or Tennessee.
Do we want our students to have the same opportunities as students in New York or New Jersey? Will our students need to compete with these students? You bet they will. We must have the will and courage to regain the stature that California once enjoyed and more importantly provide necessary resources to our children.
A well-educated work force is critical to the economic success of our state and nation.
The degree of interdependence that exists because of the global economy, the technology that links people throughout the world and the outsourcing that is occurring to India and China should serve as a wake up call.
In order to maintain a competitive advantage, to maintain a high quality of life, we must reinvest in our schools.
Boldly and unequivocally I assert we, in Glendora Unified and in school districts throughout the state, have fulfilled our part of this sacred covenant.
The state has not done the same. We are feverishly trying to protect our students. We, the adults in this state, are responsible for, and contributors to, the continued neglect of the schools.
We also have the power, if we have the will and resolve, to demand school funding be restored to levels that students in California experienced when the state was truly golden and not tarnished.
Source: San Gabriel Valley Tribune
