School’s IN! : Teachers Use Treats--Even Cash--to Lure Back Tardy Students

One lucky student at Wilson Middle School will win a hundred bucks on Friday.

The payoff likely will go to someone who has attended the East San Diego school for all five days this week.

For Wilson teachers, the payoff spells success for plans to get more students to attend the year-round school from Day 1, despite the fact that it’s the middle of summer when, traditionally, secondary schools are shut down tighter than a drum.

The Wilson staff banded together this spring to break the cycle of laggard students who fail to show up for a week or more at the beginning of year-round sessions.

The drawing for a crisp $100 bill is the highlight of the teacher-led effort. A weeklong series of events--including free T-shirts, a barbecue and dance complete with deejay--has had the intended effect.

Like sixth-grader Long Tran, wearing his new yellow T-shirt announcing Wilson is a year-round school. Or eighth-grader Tony Middleton, clutching a fistful of tickets for Friday’s raffle--five tickets for attending Monday, four for Tuesday, three for Wednesday--and anticipating two more today and one on Friday.

Wilson’s attendance during the first week has averaged 88% of its expected 1992-93 enrollment, a hefty jump from the 75% or so during its first go-around with year-round school last summer.

That’s in contrast with Memorial Junior High in Barrio Logan, where attendance during the first week has averaged about 50% of what administrators expect.

Both Wilson and Memorial are in their second year with year-round school. It’s meant to improve academic achievement by eliminating the long summer vacation that leaves many of their students--most of them non-white and whose families struggle economically--without chances for enrichment courses, camp or travel.

But students who skip a week or more before showing up risk putting themselves behind the academic eight ball and facing a yearlong struggle to catch up.

Even Farb Middle School in the U.S. Navy housing area in Tierrasanta struggles with the problem, though the school has been year-round for 15 years. The schedule was set up to accommodate the highly mobile military population that Farb serves almost exclusively.

Farb is about 130 students below its expected enrollment this week, a larger gap than in previous years.

“We’ve been on the phone every day to parents, reminding them that school has started and asking that they make sure their children come,” Principal Mary Gilliland said.

Memorial administrators are not only calling the more than 400 households with students not yet on campus but are also taking out ads in neighborhood newspapers, in English and Spanish, reminding residents that school has begun. The school’s prominent marquee along 28th Street proclaims a bilingual message that school is underway.

“Many know school has started, but a lot of this goes back to the fact that, in the inner city, school has just not been key for a certain number of students,” Memorial Principal Tony Alfaro said. “Many parents themselves have not benefited from education” so the message is not always clear.

At Wilson, teacher Suzanne Miyasaki and colleagues brainstormed the series of special first-week events using private funds----and then announced them both to returning Wilson students and to incoming sixth-graders at surrounding elementary schools before school let out in late June.

“The message here is that ‘School Pays’ in more ways than one,” Miyasaki said.

“Not only did we get the message out before school ended, but all the teachers called their students who are part of their advisory” classes before school began this week.

Wilson’s efforts--as well as the telephone work under way by Farb and Memorial--have a payoff this year beyond helping students to avoid coming in late and struggling academically.

The San Diego school district, already short more than $30 million of the state funds needed to keep programs at current levels, cannot afford to lose any of the money that it receives from the state for each child in attendance.

Wilson Principal Kimiko Fukuda warned that the school trustees might put the kibosh on year-round secondary school experiments if too much attendance money is lost.

The three middle schools are the only ones out of 36 secondary schools on year-round schedules. In contrast, more than a third of the district’s 109 elementaries run year-round, where the concept has become much more accepted by parents and students.