CUSD School Board Chief Looks Forward to Top Priorities for ’07

By Philip K. Ireland, North County Times, Escondido, Calif.

Jan. 2–CARLSBAD — Beyond the day-in, day-out work of educating kids, fact-finding will be the first job of the Carlsbad Unified School District school board as the district moves into an unprecedented era of construction and renovation in 2007, newly elected board president Kelli Moors said Wednesday.

“I see us moving on two tracks,” Moors said. “With the ‘consistent’ track, we will continue with our main goal of making sure we are supporting student achievement, and then there’s what I call the ‘new normal’ track.”

The new normal track, Moors said, began last March when the board approved the planning for another high school in Carlsbad. It continued in November with passage of a $198 million construction and renovation bond initiative to rebuild Carlsbad High, build a new high school and renovate seven more schools. And it continues now as the district gathers information that will shape the new high school and choices for high school students for decades to come.

With the new year, district officials will move forward on planning that could include simultaneous multiyear construction projects. All five school board members have said that rebuilding Carlsbad High and the design and construction of a new high school are their top priorities.

The decision on what kind of new high school will be built on district property at College Avenue and Cannon Road could come by March.

“We made the decision on another high school in March of 2006, passed a bond in November of 2006, and now in March of 2007, we’ll say, ‘Here’s what we want and here’s how to pay for it,”" Moors said. “If we could do all that in a year, that’s a lot.”

Some members of the community say they want another comprehensive high school with a full array of sports programs on par with Carlsbad High. Others say students deserve a choice between the big-box school with all the frills and a smaller school with some kind of academic focus — an art and technology magnet school or a math and science magnet, for example.

Moors emphasized that district officials are still collecting and analyzing data and that the board has made no decision on the school.

“My position is that I have no position,” Moors said. “This is an opportunity to create a new high school, so I think we ought to it do it right and think a lot.”

Moors said board members will be getting a series of reports and recommendations in the next month that will help them decide the focus of Carlsbad’s new high school.

The findings of the New School Task Force are due by the end of this month. That committee of 28 parents, teachers, administrators and local college educators was charged with researching high school programs around Southern California. Task force leader Jennifer Jefferies, a professor of education at Cal State San Marcos, is expected to make a preliminary recommendation on what type of school would best suit Carlsbad students by the end of the December, said Suzanne O’Connell, the district’s assistant superintendent.

Teachers asked their middle and high school students to write essays about the characteristics they’d like to see in a new high school. Moors said she will read them over the holidays.

Moors said she would encourage members of the board and district planners to seek feedback from teachers. She said she envisions meetings at the various schools where school staffers, teachers and administrators could offer their professional opinions. She also encouraged teachers to bring their ideas to district administrators and the school board by telephone and e-mail and in board meetings.

The public will have an opportunity to weigh in on the task force’s recommendation. O’Connell said the committee’s report will be put on the district Web site (www.carlsbadusd.k12.ca.us) in early January for a 30-day public review and comment period.

Ultimately, Superintendent John Roach will recommend to the board a course for the new school. He may accept the recommendation of the task force, reject it or change it before making his final recommendation.

Moors said she’s encouraged by the change she’s seen in the community’s interest in the workings of the district in the past year.

“There’s a new level of community involvement I haven’t seen before in my six years on the board,” Moors said. “People are paying attention to us. They’re telling us what they think individually, in board meetings and at the ballot box.”

That new community focus could help or hurt the district, depending on how it’s handled, Moors said.

Because much of the district’s preliminary work will be office-based thinking, planning and contracting work, Moors said communicating with community members will be a vital part of the district’s mission this year.

“It’s an opportunity and a challenge,” she said. “You won’t see any bulldozers out there on Jan. 1. There’s much work and investigation to be done. For instance, what are the steps to getting bulldozers out there on raw land? Once we get the information, the second part is how to help people understand how we get to a decision.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, North County Times, Escondido, Calif.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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