Some students feel left out of high school’s redesign
A plan to split Santa Monica High School into six separate houses met the approval by parents this week but students aren’t so sure.
At a meeting with about 200 parents of Samohi students on Tuesday, plans by administrators to divide the campus so each house uses the same space year long — which administrators hope will allow students to better identify with the school — received little criticism.
“I’m willing to see how it works,” said Linda Engel, a parent of an 11th grader. “To me it sounds like a great idea. I think it will be hard to implement but its goals are noble.”
Parents wanted to make sure splitting the student body wouldn’t prevent their children from taking honors classes, keep them from taking music and art classes, or hinder them from playing on sports teams.
They also asked administrators to create a checks and balances system to ensure each house has a healthy racial mix and that none of the houses are dominated by students from one geographical region of the city.
“I’m skeptical,” said Andrea Stein, a parent of two Samohi students. “But I’m enthusiastic to see changes.”
However some students are critical of the redesign. They say administrators haven’t involved them in designing the new system, and have kept them out of the loop.
During a recent visit to the Samohi campus, a reporter interviewed about a half-dozen students — none knew about the redesign plans.
“They are going too fast,” said Cynthia Santiago, Samohi’s student body president. “The students aren’t really being told what’s going on. There’s a lot of rumors going around but nobody has any real information, it seems.”
Santiago also said the redesign won’t address overcrowded classrooms, which she said are the high school’s real problem. She said no matter how many small groups administrators break students into, teachers with 40 kids to a classroom still face the same problems.
“They talk about wanting to help students who fall through the cracks but a teacher can’t get to every student if they aren’t given enough time,” Santiago said. “And that’s just what happens when their classrooms are packed so full.
“I think the goals are good,” she added. “They are admitting to a problem that exists in the school system but you need to have a small class size environment to be able to relate to teachers and develop those relationships that make a difference.”
But with declining state funding for education, administrators say class sizes are more likely to grow larger. Until then, administrators said they will continue to try ways to counteract the negative effects of having a large student body.
“Even though we’ll have big class sizes, we have an obligation to reach out to each kid,” said Ruth Esseln, a 10th-grade Samohi principal who is leading the redesign planning. “If we can’t decrease class sizes, at least we can make the schools smaller.”
Samohi will have six “houses” that will each have 25 teachers educating about 500 students. Each house will have a different name — “S” “A” “M” “O” “H” “I” — to keep them distinct from one another.
Administrators say each house will operate just like any high school — they will have their own curriculum, a principal and the teachers will work in teams, which will allow them to communicate better with each other than they do now.
Students will be randomly assigned to houses by computer, and administrators said they will go over the rolls of each house to make sure students from one zip code don’t all end up in the same house.
Each house will offer honors programs, such as advance placement courses — which earn college credit if completed properly. Arts and sports programs, on the other hand, will continue to be shared.
“There will be several areas, like music and sports, where you will leave your house to go to those classes,” said Gretchen Goetz, a co-president of the Samohi PTA. “So they won’t be able to stay in the same geographic house for all their classes.”
By focusing on more individualized education for each student, administrators hope to close the achievement gap. And by redesigning large campuses into smaller, individual ones, schools have higher attendance rates, higher grade point averages, lower dropout rates, and students and teachers report being more satisfied with the experience, studies show.
Parents said their children, especially those starting out in the ninth-grade, easily get lost in the crowd of nearly 3,500 students at Samohi. Many said they hope the redesign will help incoming students identify with the school, make friends and get to know their teachers better.
Brian Stecher said if his two children hadn’t joined the high school’s music program they would have been lost in a faceless sea of students.
“It’s not that my two kids were physically lost or couldn’t find their classes,” he said. “They didn’t get attached to a program, or an area of interest, or an activity, or a set of other kids, or a teacher that could help them enjoy their time there.
“It gives them at least a smaller environment to be bouncing around in and it’s more likely they will bounce around with the same people more often and hopefully get to know each other,” Stecher said. “I don’t think it will be a panacea. I don’t think it will make the school a wonderful place for every kids. But it’s a good start.”
When students in ninth and 10th grades show up for class next school year, they will be assigned to one of the houses, where they will stay for the remainder of their high school careers.
Administrators say they aren’t sure yet how current 11th and 12th grades will be fit into the redesign, but beginning in February, Samohi staff will meet as if they are in their own houses. The school district believes the redesign will not cost anything extra or increase its current cost of operating the high school.
“I think its going to be good for kids,” said Engel, a parent. “To the extent that you can make teachers’ jobs more manageable and kids can feel like they know their teachers better — and teachers know their students better — then everybody wins.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 18, 2003. Read the original PDF.