April 01, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

A new school for EPA?

by Alexandria Rocha

Hoping to infuse East Palo Alto's public schools with more highly-qualified teachers, the Stanford School of Education is now just one step away from operating and staffing a charter school out of the Ravenswood City School District.

Earlier this month, the district's Board of Education unanimously approved Stanford's request for a kindergarten through 12th-grade charter school from the district. Before Stanford can move forward, however, the state Department of Education still needs to approve the proposal, which is scheduled for May 20.

If the state department gives Stanford the go-ahead, the plan is to assume sole operations this summer of East Palo Alto High School, already a charter in which the school of education has helped run in collaboration with Aspire Public Schools since 2001. They would expand the school to include a kindergarten through eighth-grade program by fall 2006 at another to-be-determined site.

"We see this as a partnership with the Ravenswood School District, an opportunity to prepare a pipeline of certified teachers for Ravenswood schools and to work collaboratively with teachers and administrators to improve student learning throughout the district," said Deborah Stipek, dean of Stanford's school of education.

Stipek said the charter will be staffed with certificated teachers, but many of the school of education's adult students will do their teacher training in the classrooms. The hope is that once those students graduate from the program, they'll continue to teach within the Ravenswood district.

She said, however, there will be no requirement for the adult students to stay, and so far there are no incentives planned.

"We prepare them to work in a low-income community or with students who are English language learners, but it's not a requirement," Stipek said. "I hope it's such a wonderful place to teach that you don't need an incentive program."

Over the past two decades, law suits, funding fiascos and low test scores plagued the district. With a new superintendent, however, the district seems to be moving forward.

If approved, the new kindergarten through 12th-grade charter will officially be held by the newly-formed nonprofit entity, the Stanford Schools Corporation, which was founded by the university.

The school of education, however, will operate and manage the charters. Additionally, the sites will act as a hub for teacher development and curriculum support.

The Ravenswood District consists of four elementary schools, two academies, one magnet school, a child development center, a pre-school and five charters, including the East Palo Alto High School in which Stanford hopes to take over. Currently, that high school enrolls 300 students at its east Menlo Park campus. Once opened in fall 2006, Stanford's new elementary and middle school charters will admit just a little more than 100 students to start.

Students will be enrolled through a community lottery system and the school will add new grades each year as the children progress. "This allows us to have K-12 and really be able to work with it as a school of education resource," Stipek said. "It allows East Palo Alto to have two public high schools. It gives the kids there more choices."

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