TAKING THE SBAC PRO/CON (2)
U NI N ELD PROGRAM HELPS IMMIGRANTS (4)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SPREAD (8-9)
VALENTINE’S DAY GRAMS (10-11)
ATHLETES COMMIT TO COLLEGES (14)
THE
February 2023 VOLUME XXXV ISSUE IV
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STUDENT VOICE OF MILPITAS HIGH SCHOOL
School Site Council make-up does not comply with state law By Satvika Iyer
Courtesy of MUSD
A 3D rendering shows the new campus, which will serve over 2700 students at 1331 East Calaveras Blvd.
District plans to open MHS extension at Innovation Campus in fall 2024. Project still needs $25 million By Savan Bollu
The MHS extension at the Innovation Campus is tentatively scheduled to open in the fall of 2024, Executive Director of Learning and Innovation Priti Johari said. The extension will expand career pathway programs for high schoolers and alleviate overcrowding at MHS, Johari said. The facility will also house Calaveras Hills High School, the Milpitas Adult Education Program, a community college extension, and the district offices, she added. The Innovation Campus will be completed in three phases; the target date for completion of the third phase is fall 2025, Superintendent Cheryl Jordan said. The district successfully passed Bond Measure AA in 2018, which allocated $66.8 million to develop the Innovation Campus, according to the MUSD website. However, the district still needs $25 million to complete the Inno-
vation Campus, the website says. “We couldn’t predict in 2018, when we calculated the amount of money that we needed, that we were going to go through a pandemic, and there would be a gas shortage and drought and all these other things that drove the costs up more than 50%,” School Board President Chris Norwood said. MUSD has been talking to local legislators like Ro Khanna and asking corporations for donations to cover the costs, Norwood said. The district is not very interested in asking taxpayers for more funding when it could be used for other resources, he added. “Currently, we have applied for matching bond dollars from the state, and we expect to get around $12 to $13 million,” Jordan said. “The board and I have been working very diligently to get business partners as well as institutes of higher education interested in supporting and becoming partners. For example,
one is KLA. This is the third year of their three-year agreement and they’ve done $750,000 in exchange for naming rights of the STEAM lab.” The Innovation Campus will have a capacity for around 500 MHS students, Norwood said. Other programs at the campus include an early education research center and a workforce development center, he added. The Innovation Campus will have local-industry-related programming like manufacturing, environmental science, biotechnology, and virtual design, he said. “We’re looking to partner with businesses in the city to provide internships, apprenticeships, summer jobs, job fairs, and those types of things for our MUSD students,” Norwood said. Teachers from MHS will relocate to the Innovation Campus upon completion, though details are still being planned out, NorSEE PAGE 16
SBAC opt-outs lead to lower school rating By Varun Ravuri
The number of student opt-outs for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) test at MHS increased significantly last year, impacting MUSD school ratings, Assistant Principal Amanda Gross said. According to the California School Dashboard, MHS is rated currently as “very low” for English language arts (ELA) and “low” for mathematics. The participation rates for the ELA and mathematics portions of the 2022 SBAC exam were 59% and 57%, respectively, according to the California Department of Education’s website. In 2018 – the last year for which the participation report is available on the website – the participation rates were 95% and 94%, respectively. “The school and district seem like they have not made the gains that we potentially have in the last few years because our parent exemptions went in as the lowest score possible per individual,”
Gross said. In order to promote SBAC testing and improve scores, various courses of action such as practice tests and homeroom activities have been planned to be set in place to better prepare juniors, Gross said. “There will be a letter that … we send out electronically to both parents and students via ParentSquare about the test itself and the need to take it,” Gross said. In the past, having access to a larger number of student scores allowed the English department to utilize them to decide what novels and skills to focus on, and help plan out curriculum, English teacher Heidi Shannahan said. “When we used these tests every year (to measure progress), we could know what kind of class a particular student should be placed in, and a group of scores helped determine where they were at at the end of the year,” Shannahan said. However, to improve prepara-
tion for such standardized tests and further encourage students, she believes teachers and the state should work together more. on establishing and applying state standards in accordance in what is taught at school, and make the common core expectations more clear, which can boost scores, Shannahan said. “There does not seem to be a direct correlation between what is being taught in the classroom and what they kids are being asked to do (on the SBAC tests),” Shannahan said. Other than knowing how they compare to their peers and other students in the state, the SBAC test does not particularly benefit test takers and is not reflected on transcripts, and there is no other motive for students to take it and do well, Shannahan said. Students tend to opt out because they “may feel that it allows for more time to study for AP tests, some students would like SEE PAGE 16
The School Site Council (SSC) at MHS is out of compliance with California law because student and teacher members were not elected by their respective peers, Interim Principal Charles Gary, Jr. said. California Education Code Section 65000 stipulates that “a school that operates a program that requires a School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA), pursuant to Section 64001, shall establish a schoolsite council.” “The SPSA is designed, implemented, and monitored by the SSC to ensure that the LCFF (Local Control Funding Formula) funds are being spent effectively to support the school’s improvement efforts to attain the highest possible levels of teaching and
learning at the school,” according to MHS’ website. For a secondary school, California Education Code says that the SSC should consist of the principal or a principal designee, teachers, non-teacher school personnel, parents, and students, all chosen by their peers. At one of the SCC meetings this school year, only two teachers and two students were present, and none of them were elected, Gary said. “The two students there left the meeting right after they finished their report, before we had even begun to review the SPSA,”Gary said. Associated Student Body (ASB) class commissioners are appointed to the role of SSC representaSEE PAGE 16
Satvika Iyer | THE UNION
Sandy Scrempos refers to the SPSA to justify major school expenses.
State deficit could impact MUSD By Erick Johnson
California Governor Gavin Newsom announced an expected deficit for California’s state budget for the upcoming 2023 fiscal year on Jan. 10, causing concern over possible cuts to education funding across the state, according to reporter Sophia Bollag from the San Francisco Chronicle. If this shortfall were to happen, school districts will be forced to revisit their budgets, Bollag reported. While no immediate budget cuts are expected, the district nevertheless prepares for such a contingency, Chief Business Officer Wendy Zhang said. The district is aware that most of its funding comes from the state, she said. “We have a budget of approximately $174 million,” superintendent Cheryl Jordan said. “We get the bulk of our funding from the state in the form of the Local Control Funding Formula.” The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) and excess property taxes are responsible for adding $111 million to the budget, and that accounts for approximately 75% of the budget this school year, according to Zhang’s Approved Operating Budget (AOB). The remainder of the budget comes from local, state, and
federal revenues, according to the AOB. Of the $111 million from the LCFF, $57.4 million came from local taxes, while the rest was granted by the state as aid, Zhang said. “(Funding is) based on the number of students who are English learners, from low-income backgrounds, (or) might be at risk of homelessness or foster youth,” Jordan said. “The district gets additional funding dollars the higher that percentage of our population is, which is about 32% right now.” Overall, MUSD had a revenue of $150 million and would have spent $165 million, according to the AOB. MUSD has been forced to pull money from several of its reserves to compensate for this loss, Zhang said. If the state or federal government were forced to reduce budgeting for school districts, MUSD would not be immediately affected, but will eventually have to begin saving money, Zhang added. “We can encourage attendance across the district,” Zhang said. “Attendance across MUSD is at 96%, and if it increases just one percent more, that can result in the district receiving one million dollars.” Beyond that, if the district disciplines itself in its spendings, it will face no problems, Zhang said.