Granada Hills’ $117,148 Tops Awards to L.A. Schools

The seniors at Granada Hills High laid claim to the academic bragging rights of the Los Angeles school district Friday when they won $117,148, the largest award in the district, for their performance on the California Assessment Program standardized tests.

Established two years ago, the program, called “Cash for CAP,” gives money to any school that tests at least 93% of its seniors and shows “overall improvement” contrasted with last year’s test results.

“This year’s class is just a great group of kids and they are really smart,” said Rita Hymes, college adviser at Granada. “They were really motivated to do well on the test.”

Lincoln High School in the Lincoln Heights section of Los Angeles was the district’s second-highest money winner, with $116,319.

Other San Fernando Valley schools that won in the “Cash for CAP” program were: San Fernando, $69,000; Canoga Park, $33,989; Grant in Van Nuys, $30,824; Cleveland in Reseda, $10,579; Taft in Woodland Hills, $3,641; and Polytechnic in Sun Valley, $840.

Fifty-two of the 129 Los Angeles high school programs qualified for cash awards. This is a slight increase from the 50 high school programs that won cash last year.

Total of $1.3 Million

This year, Los Angeles high schools won a total of $1.3 million from the incentive program, a district report says. Last year, the high schools won $1.5 million.

Both high schools in the Burbank Unified School District came up winners this year after finishing out of the money last year. Burroughs High will get $87,410 and Burbank High will get $6,630.

Several other Valley-area school districts, such as Simi Valley, Moorpark, Oxnard Union, Las Virgenes, William S. Hart, Conejo Valley Unified and Oak Park, declined to announce their CAP scores or awards until the results can be reported to the local board of education later this month.

Fresno’s Roosevelt High School topped all of the state’s high schools in the competition by winning $192,000. That is the largest award ever paid to a school in the two years of the “Cash for CAP” program.

Each school decides how to spend its own CAP money. According to guidelines from the Educational Improvement Incentive Program, a school advisory council made up of parents, students, teachers and school administrators must be established to review “Cash for CAP” expenditures.

The only prohibitions on spending the money are that it not be used for salaries and that the school council’s decision be approved by the district’s governing board.