Column: Learning Matters: Even successful education programs can present budgetary, administrative challenges

In my last column, I wrote about two of Glendale Unified’s successful, “home-grown” school choice offerings — Clark Magnet High School and the Foreign Language Academies of Glendale, FLAG.

Focusing on the combination of academic and financial benefits those programs brought to the school district, I also hinted at the threat posed by corporate, out-of-district charter applicants wishing to establish schools within Glendale Unified’s boundaries.

But whether district or corporate-sponsored school choice is replete with pluses and minuses, points are worth noting. Even successful programs such as Clark and FLAG present budgetary and administrative challenges, and though I will continue to question the interests of corporate charter schools, some of them serve public education and its students well.

I’ve visited a Green Dot charter high school in south central Los Angeles, for instance, and heard from students and teachers there who experienced the positive change Green Dot brought to their campus. I’m aware, too, of other charter schools that have successfully engaged students and families in ways district schools did not.

So today, with cuts to the federal education budget looming, I’ll share a few more points about school choice as I’ve seen it in Glendale, starting with “the simultaneous successes and budgetary challenges” to which I alluded last month.

Some challenges are born of success. As public school educators committed to improving outcomes for all students, Glendale board and staff members have shared the district’s FLAG program — designed to make students proficient in English and a second language — with neighboring districts.

In workshops held at regional and state conferences as well as in presentations to neighboring school boards, Glendale Unified has spread the gospel of language-immersion instruction, and it has succeeded in making converts.

Many districts, including those on Glendale’s borders, have followed Glendale Unified’s lead and adopted their own language-immersion programs.

As they’ve done so, however, their willingness to grant their students permission to attend Glendale Unified schools has diminished. Looking ahead, as more area districts offer dual-immersion instruction, the financial benefits Glendale Unified has experienced from enrolling out-of-district students will likely diminish.

Teacher recruitment for FLAG programs is another challenge expected to grow with the expansion of language-immersion programs across the state. Staffing for such instruction is always a challenge, given the requirement for native or native-like language skills, along with appropriate teaching credentials.

Increasingly, at a time of anticipated widespread teacher shortages, Glendale will have to compete even harder for FLAG teachers.

Language-immersion programs pose other staffing challenges, too. First, as Glendale teachers have seen in the years since Edison Elementary opened its first Spanish immersion class in 2003, dual-language programs gradually displace “English-only” teachers, bumping them to non-FLAG schools, as the immersion classes expand through the grade levels.

Second is the problem of class size, a critical element in any public school budget. While FLAG kindergarten classes are typically full with waiting lists, upper-grade classes generally shrink as some FLAG students inevitably leave the district, leaving seats that can be filled only by students with similar language proficiencies.

In other words, to transfer into a FLAG class, a student must generally have been enrolled in a similar program elsewhere. Until recently, there haven’t been many such transfers, but this is one Glendale Unified problem that could actually be helped by the spread of immersion programs in other districts.

Clark Magnet faces a different type of challenge stemming from its location and its original purpose of reducing enrollment at the formerly overcrowded Glendale and Hoover high-school campuses.

Since Clark’s inception in 1998, the district has provided buses to transport students from Glendale to the La Crescenta campus, a cost it willingly bore to establish the needed school and to ensure access to all students.

However, as district enrollment dropped in line with the faltering economy, and the state cut the education budget, Glendale Unified began asking Clark families to contribute to transportation costs. While many families pitched in, this budget item remains a concern — just one more factor to weigh in the ever-shifting balance that is public education.

School choice has more pros and cons than I can address here, including the motivational power of choice itself, over-reliance on test scores as indicators of “good schools,” the effects on neighborhoods and school climates, and increased transportation costs.

But Green Dot’s commitment to underserved neighborhoods and Clark’s commitment to buses point to the critical importance of student access to any choice a district may offer. The alternative to access is socioeconomic segregation, the last thing our society needs.

JOYLENE WAGNER is a past member of the Glendale Unified school board, from 2005 to 2013, and currently serves on the boards of the Glendale Educational Foundation and other nonprofit organizations. Email her at jkate4400@aol.com.