I tell people all the time that San Marcos Unified School District (SMUSD) is one of the highest performing school districts in the county, if not the highest, and our test scores continue to prove it.

Recently, test scores were released for the 2009 state standard tests, and for the Academic Performance Index (API), and SMUSD continued its climb upward. For the third consecutive year, our students, at all grade levels, improved from the previous year. Our district-wide API score was 836, 26-points higher than 2008. And of the 12 unified school districts in the San Diego County, only four have API scores over 800, San Marcos, Poway, Carlsbad, and Coronado.

Breaking down the scores is even more impressive. Of our 11 elementary schools, 10 have an API of over 800. San Elijo Elementary came in at 932, placing it in the top 10 in the county, and Richland Elementary experienced a 56 point gain, the second highest gain of any elementary school in the county. Two of our three middle schools are over 800, and both of our high schools bested the 800 mark.

The achievement gains of our high schools deserve special recognition. In San Diego County there are 63 public high schools. Of those, only 15 have surpassed the API benchmark of 800, and both San Marcos High School and Mission Hills High School are on that short list.

The high school scores are even more impressive when broken down by the subgroups. Like the state as a whole, our largest subgroups are White and Latino. At San Marcos High, the White subgroup scored an 874, the second highest API score in the entire county, and the Latino subgroup score, at 730, was the seventh highest. At Mission Hills, the White subgroup scored 856, the sixth highest API score in the county, and the Latino subgroup 756, also ranking sixth. Whether looking at overall test scores, or examining them by subgroup, our schools compete with, and often outperform, the most elite public schools in San Diego County.

These remarkable gains, of course, don’t happen by accident. At SMUSD we are fortunate to have dedicated teachers and school staffs, who, on a daily basis, are creating positive learning environments. Thank you to all the employees in the district, and to all the parents, for helping to make SMUSD one of the finest school districts around.

When I decided to run for school board several months ago, I made it a personal goal to sit down with every principal, and to tour every campus in the district. If I was going to be a member of the district’s governing board, I felt I owed it to the students and parents in the district, and to myself, to learn as much about our district as I could in the course of a campaign.

Yesterday I completed my goal. I wanted to extend a personal thanks to all the principals who made time for me, and to all the teachers whose classrooms I visited, which was probably close to 100. It was a tremendous learning experience for me, and left me feeling very good about the current state of our school district, and the direction we are headed.

To read about my visits, scroll down here or go the “prior posts” menu.

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours at Joli Ann Leichtag Elementary School (JAL) with Principal Eric Forseth. Mr. Forseth gave me what was probably the most complete tour of any school I have visited so far. I think we spent time in every classroom on campus, time in the (beautiful) library, and a tour of the administrative offices and the multi-purpose room. Thank you to Mr. Forseth, the teachers, and staff for the generosity of your time.

JAL is a brand new school. When I say brand new, I mean brand new. The day before yesterday was the last day of construction, and during my visit the grassy field was opened for the very first time (I got to witness the first kickball kicked over the fence and into a neighborhood yard. It was the first of hundreds I am sure). Yesterday was also the day that the portrait of Joli Ann Leichtag was hung in the school’s lobby.

JAL, you may not know, was named after Joli Ann Leichtag, a local educator who died of cancer last year. Wanting to honor her memory in some way related to education, her parents gave $6 million to the SMUSD PACE Promise, a program that helps students gain acceptance and afford college. As a thank you to the Liechtag family, the district named the new school in her honor. Tomorrow is the grand opening celebration.

The school may be brand new, but no time was wasted in filling with students and getting down to the serious business of learning. At 775 students, the school is essentially full. And I every class I visited was completely immersed in the lesson plan for the day. Most impressive to me was the consistency of those lessons across the grade levels. Every fifth grade class was learning studying democracy, every fourth grade was doing the same math, etc. There is obviously a tremendous amount of organization and collaboration among the teachers, and a feeling of teamwork among the staff.

Like many of the elementary schools I have visited, Mr. Forseth has a placed a special emphasis on reading. The school’s impressive library is opened early so students can read before school, and special awards are given to the most prolific readers. Students are told again and again that “everybody has to have a book going” at all times, which I am confident is going to translate into some impressive test scores in the coming years.

To say that Carrillo Elementary School has the support of its parents would be an understatement. When I stopped by this morning to meet with Principal Fred Wise there must have been at least 50 parents mingling about the playground before school. Some were there to monitor students, but most there to socialize. This kind of parental involvement is something Mr. Wise encourages.

It’s safe to say Mr. Wise knows a thing or two about being an elementary school principal. He was recognized as Principal of the Year in all of San Diego and Imperial County in 2006, and he’s been a principal for a very long time. In fact, he opened Carrillo Elementary School as the principal 10 years ago when it had only 240 students. Today it has 860.

Carrillo Elementary School has grown much larger than was anticipated when it opened, but Mr. Wise makes a concerted effort to maintain the feeling of a small community on campus.

For those familiar with schools in our district, Carrillo is perennially one of the highest performing schools. Mr. Wise attributes his school’s success to his teaching staff, the vast majority of which he considers “A+ teachers.” He also has an obvious affection for his students and their parents, and the feeling is clearly mutual. While standing with Mr. Wise at least a dozen kids ran up to him to give him a hug, or to share some news. And speaking with some parents on the campus it was clear they felt the same.

I have always believed that school curricula should be relevant and state of the art. For those students who plan to go to college, we have an obligation to make sure they have available to them all the necessary courses that would be required to gain acceptance to any college, whether it’s a community college or America’s finest universities.

For those who opt not to go on to college, we need to do our best to provide those students with an employable skill, similar to the health occupations and police/fire academy currently offered at Mission Hills High School.

But one of the biggest gifts we could give ALL our students in SMUSD, whether college-bound or not, is an education in basic economics and financial literacy. Lately, we have all learned more than we wanted to know about bad debt and frozen credit markets and such, but it has reinforced the need to teach kids the fundamentals about taxes, markets, and, most important, personal finance, including credit and debt.

San Diego Unified School District has produced a new curriculum called “Personal Financial Literacy, the Game of Life” to educate students about money management (Here is the UT article about the program). This 10-day mini-course will become part of every senior economics class starting this year, and is designed give students a basic understanding of personal finance, building good credit, and the perils of too much debt.

This is something I would like to see offered in San Marcos Unified. If elected, I will ask the administration to look into the course offered down in San Diego, and to find ways that we can offer a similar education to our students. As I said, it is the least we can do for students before sending them out into the real world.