Santa Monica : Program for Ninth-Graders

A pilot program to help incoming freshmen succeed in school will be launched at Santa Monica High School in September.

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board on Monday approved the core program, which will include 260 students, or about 40% of the freshmen. Teams of science, math and English teachers will teach the same group of students for a semester, to help “personalize school” for the ninth-graders, Principal Nardy Samuels said.

The teachers will set aside one period a day to counsel students, meet with parents and plan lessons with other teachers, he said. Life and study skills, such as note taking, essay writing and how to set and reach goals, would be incorporated into the curriculum.

Seven teachers have volunteered for the project, Samuels said.

According to a faculty committee, most of the entering freshmen do not have the reading and study skills needed for high school. Because they have more independence and choices than in middle school, many students get lost in the shuffle, the committee said. During the fall semester, there were 300 instances of freshmen being referred to school administrators for disciplinary action. This spring, about one-third of the freshmen had grade-point averages of less than 2.0 on a 4.0 scale.

“Going to six different classes with six different teachers just doesn’t seem to do it,” Samuels told the school board. “We believe kids involved in the core (program) will not slip through the cracks. . . . Teachers will keep on the students.”

The program, which is based on similar projects at some of the district’s middle schools and at high schools in Pasadena and Cerritos, will be evaluated after the first semester, Samuels said.

Students will be randomly assigned to the program.

The board also approved switching from self-scheduling to computer scheduling of classes for freshmen. District officials said computer scheduling will help balance classes because students of the same academic ability tend to stick together and because students tend to choose courses their friends are taking.