Poway Unified board plans May 22 workshop on Common Core Curriculum

By Emily Sorensen

The Poway Unified School District board will hold a special workshop on Wednesday, May 22 to discuss Common Core State Standards.

The announcement was timely, as the April school board meeting, held Monday, included a presentation from the Citizens for Quality Education on concerns about Common Core State Standards and the effect implementation might have on the district.

The presentation, given by Steve Sarviel, Wayne Rounsavell, Jeannie Foulkrod, Mary Baker, Janeth Bartlett and Dan Wiberg, included a PowerPoint presentation and documentation on their concerns, which included the financial burden of implementation, lowering of PUSD’s standards, and concerns about the privacy of students and parents.

Sarviel said that Citizens for Quality Education was seeking to establish a transparent dialogue between the community and the board about Common Core State Standards, as well as make the board aware of concerns and questions the community had about implementation of the standards.

Common Core State Standards, sometimes referred to as Common Core Curriculum, is an idea being advocated by the federal government to create common educational standards in all states. Most states have formally adopted Common Core State Standards, including California, which has given an adoption deadline to school districts of July 2015, except K-8 mathematics, which has a deadline of March 2014.

Foulkrod said that the group estimated, using figures from the California state website, PUSD and the Pioneer Institute, that initial implementation of Common Core State Standards in the district would cost over $8 million, including testing, professional development and textbook materials, and would cost a further $950,000 annually, with further ongoing costs unknown. “Expenses [for Common Core State Standards] need to be analyzed, and the analysis needs to be provided to the public,” said Foulkrod.

Privacy was another concern the Citizens for Quality Education raised, citing data tracking and data mining systems that are required to track whether districts, students and teachers are meeting the standards. “Fordham University Law School reports that state educational databases across the country ignore key privacy protections for the nation’s K-12 children,” said Baker.

The fact that the new Common Core State Standards are untested was another concern raised, with Bartlett comparing implementing the untested standards in schools to schools giving untested pharmaceutical drugs to the students. “[Common Core State Standards] is untried so that there is no experience with respect to its effectiveness or its safety in regards to student development,” said Bartlett.

The board praised Citizens for Quality Education’s presentation, saying that this was how they wanted the community to bring concerns to their attention. Collins invited the group to attend and give feedback at the May 22 special workshop. “We’re trying to do this thoughtfully,” said Collins, who said he hasn’t seen any large swing in standards between PUSD’s current educational standards and Common Core State Standards. Collins also said that the staff is looking at the standards to see the changes in materials and resources.

The board also approved the authorization and issuance of the second in a series of bonds intended to pay for the new School 39, which will be located near Del Norte High School, for an amount up to, but not exceeding, $20.5 million. Called the 2013 Special Tax Revenue Bonds, Series B, these bonds received a BBB- rating from Standard and Poor’s. Benjamin Dolinka, of the Dolinka Group, explained at the meeting that the rating had to do with Community Facilities District 13, called “The Lakes,” which is only partially built out and used bonds to build the infrastructure of the entire planned area. Instead, the Dolinka Group plans to use a bond insurer for the Series B bonds in order to reassure bond purchasers that they will not lose out on their money, the cost of which was not available at the time of the meeting.

Board member Kimberley Beatty argued that the board had not had enough time to review and understand the hundreds of pages of legal and financial documents sent to them about the bond, and voted “no” on the agenda item.

The next regularly scheduled board meeting will be 6 p.m. Monday, May 20 at the district office.