The Sequoia Union High School District has made great progress during Allen's first term (2011-2015). Our schools are high performing, well run, and highly acclaimed. Here are some of the District's many accomplishments:
- Preparing for Tomorrow's Curriculum: We have been very proactive in implementing the new Common Core curriculum, relying largely on teacher-led curricular design, and have devoted substantial resources to professional development to prepare our teachers for the transition to Common Core. The District been a leader in this regard, and we are ahead of many other school districts.
- Keeping Communities and Schools Together: We made a historic adjustment to our intradistrict boundaries to better align local communities with their neighborhood high schools, and in particular, to assign all students from the Ravenswood School District in East Palo Alto to their neighborhood high school, instead of scattering them to three different schools across the District -- one involving bus ride of 11 miles from their homes.
- Getting Ready for the Future -- Enrollment Growth and Facilities: The District acted with foresight to prepare for the substantial enrollment growth that SUHSD will be experiencing in the coming years; enrollment in 2020-21 is projected to be approximately 20% higher than our enrollment in 2011-2012. We are staying ahead of the curve instead of having to play catch-up. The District placed a carefully developed $265 bond measure on the ballot in June 2014, which won support from over 65% of the electorate. We have established facilities planning teams with extensive teacher, staff, parent, and student involvement at each of our sites and are proceeding with needed facilities expansion.
- Narrowing the Achievement Gap: We continue to work to reduce the achievement gap for socio-economically disadvantaged students. There is no overnight solution, but we are seeing progress in some key areas. For instance, rates of completion of a college preparatory ("A-G") curriculum have increased 14% among Hispanic/Latino students and 11% among socio-economically disadvantaged students over three years. We have also significantly increased the enrollment of students of color in our Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses.
- Supporting Excellence in Teaching: We have created an in-house Professional Development program, staffed by SUHSD educators, that is the envy of many other school districts. This reflects our commitment to teaching excellence.
- Keeping Kids in School: The District has dramatically reduced our expulsion rates, from 113 in the 2009-2010 academic year to 37 during the 2014-2015 academic year.
- Helping Students Who Have Fallen Behind to Catch Up: We launched a task force to review operations of Redwood High School, our continuation high school for our most credit-deficient students. The school will move to a full-day instructional model with a theme-based academy focus to better engage students.
- Creating Innovative Small Schools: We are exhibiting great innovation with small school curricular alternatives. For instance, we have converted the East Palo Alto Academy (EPAA) High School, which employs instructional practices based on Stanford School of Education research, into a dependent charter school. We are also in the design phase of creating an innovative new small school, which will employ innovated project-based learning with a "linked learning" focus and ties to the local Community College District.
- Supporting the Whole Child: We have embraced practices that focus on students' sense of well-being, not just the traditional curriculum, to develop their sense of belonging, self-worth, resilience, and engagement, including through our novel "Aspirations Advocates" program for the District's most at-risk students.
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