Is Clovis Unified playing well with others?
Several Bee readers are upset at Clovis Unified's new marketing strategy, which is to send fliers to businesses informing employees that they can use their workplace addresses to get their children into Clovis schools. People with long memories will be amused by this controversy, since it wasn't so long ago that the district was practically ready to hire the cast and crew from "Law and Order" to make sure you weren't using a fake address to get into their schools.
Times are different now and a few Valley districts are actually dropping in enrollment, which means less money for the districts. The Bee's story by Anne Dudley Ellis lays out the controversy very well here.
Read the uproar on the Opinion pages from our readers here and here .
Personally, I see no problem with aggressive marketing. Parents should know what their choices are, and they should do what's in the best interests of their children. I do think it's sad, though, that you have to show a pay stub annually. That means if you get fired or laid off -- something often outside your control -- you have to yank your kids out of school when they most need stability. Not good, and definitely something to consider before basing your children's school choice on the ups and downs of the workplace. .
Comments
What odd language to my old ears. "Marketing strategy" for a public school district.
50 years allowed me to get
to know the Clovis Unified School District.
The unwritten law of the
everlasting trustees and
school managment was simple: The end justifies the means. And even when illegal...that was it.
Go to the Bee morgue for
Clovis Independent back copies.
Posted by: Isabell Lawson | July 10, 2008 10:31 AM
I don't see why people can't send their kids to any public school they want since they all get money from the state. Clovis has good education as do other districts but their emphasis on sports is overbearing. They want to be the best no matter what. It ticks me off that Sanger is throwing a fit yet they won't take an exchange student because they say they are overcrowded. People have been using different addresses for years to get their kids in the school they want.
Posted by: Jackie Krage | July 10, 2008 11:44 AM
The quality of Clovis Unified School District education does show impressive scores, compared with Fresno school districts.
That CUD's bloated geographical area would come back to bite them in the extended back has happened. CUD is serving a huge bedroom community
of government employees and other White Collar workforce whose children
are send to school speaking English. The influx of such residents has fallen off. Leapfrog development has slowed down and many homes are
under the hammer. No matter what the realtors want you to believe.
The last few copies of the now defunct Clovis Independent looked like
a foreclosure gazette. Pages and pages of it.
Fresno school districts, on the other hand, have to overcome the handicap
of over a hundred languages and/or dialects the kids come to school with.
Would CUD have to overcome such language diversity, the scores would not
be any better than Fresno's schools' and with a certain chagrin....would not
fall short of enrollment either. Now CUD has to support an overgrown district,extending far into the mountain areas, without the necessary revenue being realized. The moral of it...bigness does not always equate greatness.
And a bullet train from Sacramento to San Diego buzzing by every day without stopping at most of the towns around here, is not going to boost enrollment.
But men must have their toys, regardless how much it costs, regardless how
much farmland would have to be paved over.
Posted by: Isabell Lawson | July 10, 2008 2:01 PM
Maybe the problem is having the state's money tied to kids being in school. Kids go to school sick, kids are not expelled when it is warranted, families are not allowed to go on vacations when it suits them even if it means missing a wedding across the country or world, and kids are bribed into coming to school the last few days of school before an extended break in order to make sure the attendance numbers are up. Any learning is secondary.
I am not sure what the solution is but his doesn't seem to be it.
Posted by: Andy Hansen-Smith | July 10, 2008 8:59 PM
In response to Andy Hansen-Smith
Having the money tied to school attendance, being a problem, is more than just "maybe".
The United States spends more on each student than do the industrialized
European nations, but the achievement scores of American students are
consistently lower. It is a fact that European children are not born with
a higher IQ, but that the American kids are being shortchanged by untenable,
education systems. The financing appears to be one of the problems, or maybe THE problem. In the Western European countries financing of education is centralized. It matters not if the child goes to school in district 1 or district XYZ or what have you.
But coming back to the topic CUD, Clovis Unified creates its own problems, not only tied to the price of each kid in the attendance nose count but the mindset of those who run the schools. During the course of 50 years one can see a lot of evil, hear a lot of evil, but if one bends over backwards to be fair, one speaks no evil.
Posted by: Isabell lawson | July 11, 2008 8:43 AM
Isabell Lawson
What incentive does a school district have under a centralized financing other then doing what is best for the students?
Posted by: Andy Hansen-Smith | July 12, 2008 12:53 PM