Seeds of progress
By Kevin Uhrich 09/18/2008
Long on hope but short on actual academic acheivements, Board of Education President Tom Selinske Tuesday depicted the Pasadena Unified School District as one in transition — or as Selinske put it, a district on the brink of “transformational change.”
“This year has been one of promise, preparation and progress — a year where the district has taken bold action,” Selinske said in the annual board president’s speech delivered at Eliot Middle School in Altadena.
Steering clear of some of the harsher realities facing the district — dwindling enrollments, dilapidated buildings, persistently low test scores at some schools and possibly more budget cuts at the state level — Selinske remained upbeat and spoke mainly of seeds sown last year in hopes of improvements in the months and years ahead.
The real accomplishments last year, Selinske said, were the many new connections made by the district with various other public agencies and mostly arts-related nonprofit organizations, and the “reinvention” of Muir High School, which had been on the state’s low-test-score watch list for five years when Superintendent Edwin Diaz decided to reconfigure the campus into five separate small learning communities, or SLCs, where students receive instruction in specialized fields.
Selinske also spoke about the need for voters to approve Measure TT, a 20-year, $350-million bond measure on the Nov. 4 ballot aimed at repairing and improving aging schools.
“Measure TT will ensure that our students are safe, ensure that our campuses support modern educational and technological needs, and leverage resources to expand partnerships to increase afterschool programming and community facilities,” he said.
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