They thought it couldn’t be done. They said it was crazy to keep producing a comprehensive guide to San Diego County schools every single year. They doubted our ability to keep coming up with new, useful bits of information to sprinkle in.
Well, they were wrong.
OK, I should come clean here. I am the “they” referenced above, but in my defense every year our A Parent’s Guide to San Diego Schools feels like a herculean task. Still, we somehow keep pulling it off. Last week, we published the seventh edition of our guide and it’s the biggest and best looking yet.
Not only does this year’s guide feature all of the content you’ve come to rely on, it also has some exciting new additions.
The old favorites include explainers of stuff like after-school care and school choice and data about everything from chronic absenteeism to career-technical education programs to our bespoke income vs. test score metric. (We have some exciting news about that metric. We’ll share more on that later, so keep your eyes peeled.)
This year though, we’ve added a section on private schools. Information on private schools has long been a widely requested topic, but it’s not an easy get. This section is a unique window into local private schools, largely because private schooling in California is notoriously opaque. Students at private schools don’t have to take standardized tests and administrators don’t report out much of the demographic or performance data that public schools are required to report.
We ended up mixing what little public data private schools are required to report – like a school’s enrollment, religiously affiliation and whether it is coed – with information we collected directly from school officials. That included whether schools required entrance exams, if they offered sports, what the average tuition was and if they offered financial aid. Because of how difficult it can be to manually collect that information, we limited the scope of the section to only include schools that enrolled more than 200 students.
Every year, some elements of the guide are experimental. In my view, that’s part of what makes it so special. We’re actively trying to evolve its offerings to fit the needs of you, our dear readers. But with every big swing also comes some question marks. This year’s addition of private schools is no different.
The biggest question mark when it comes to the information we gathered outside of official channels is pretty obvious: can we trust it? For example, we asked private schools to provide college acceptance rates. But since they don’t have to report those rates to any regulating body, how sure can we be that they’re not bullshitting us? Or that they’re not calculating their statistics differently?
To be honest, I’m not sure… and I think that’s OK. Every year, we learn lessons from how we do the guide and adapt our approach. That’s how this stuff should work. Try things out, drop what doesn’t work and double down on what does.
So, head on over to Schools Guide central our website to get access to all of this edu-goodness or download a copy. You can pick up a physical copy at a San Diego library or any of the other local distribution partners listed on the Schools Guide homepage.
We’re also beginning to roll out our yearly Schools Guide workshops! The first one is at the Jewish Community Center in La Jolla on Feb. 24, followed by another on March 2 in Escondido. We’ll be announcing additional workshops in the coming weeks.
As always, we’d love to get your feedback. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch and let us know what we can do to make next year’s Schools Guide even better. Shoot me an email here.
Local Appointed to Top Assembly Ed Committee Spot
There’s a new chair of California’s Assembly Education Committee and she’s a familiar face. Former Poway Unified Trustee and first-term state Assemblymember Darshana Patel was recently was recently appointed to the top spot on the body’s education committee. Her tenure will begin March 2.
We ran a Q&A with Patel last year, shortly after her election. This week, EdSource wrote a profile of the scientist-turned-school board member-turned-assemblymember, laying out what some of her priorities as chair will be.
“Schools are being tasked to do more and more without significantly more money, or the money is not distributed in a way that parallels the increase in cost,” Patel told EdSource. “I want to guide the conversations around feasibility and implementation with a mindful eye that if we want to do well-intentioned policies right, they have to come with the appropriate amount of time and money.”
State Supe Angle: Patel’s ascension to the ed committee chair may have a downstream benefit for another local education figure – San Diego Unified Trustee Richard Barrera. That’s because Patel is replacing former ed committee chair Al Muratsuchi, Barrera’s opponent in an increasingly competitive race for state superintendent.
The 310,000-member California Teachers Association’s recent endorsement of Barrera’s campaign vaulted his candidacy from longshot to real contender. But unlike in past years, the support from the state’s big education unions splintered. While Barrera nabbed CTA, California’s biggest prize, the 120,000-member California Federation of Teachers backed Muratsuchi.
As EdSource reported, Muratsuchi’s defenestration as head of the ed committee could deprive “him visibility and influence in his campaign for state superintendent.”
Discord in the local labor ranks: While the CTA’s unexpected endorsement of Barrera was lauded by many in the world of local education, it didn’t sit well with everyone. Last week, we reported that the leadership of a union Barrera once helped to lead is calling on the CTA to rescind what they say is a “deeply concerning” endorsement.
That call to rescind the endorsement, which came from leaders of the UFCW Local 135, stems from still lingering resentments from a sexual harassment scandal and resulting political battle that reshaped San Diego’s labor movement. Still, leaders in local and state education unions are holding firm in their support for Barrera.
What We’re Writing
A December video from a YouTuber claiming to have uncovered widespread fraud in Minnesota child care centers caught fire among conservatives. It also contributed to the Trump administration’s decision to deploy thousands of immigration officers to Minneapolis in a chaotic campaign that’s left two American citizens dead at the hands of masked federal agents. But while that YouTuber claimed to have found fire, he found little more than smoke. Understanding the difference is all the more important, because he’s set his sights on San Diego next.
Albert Einstein Academy has been going through some things. For more than a year, the charter community has been roiled by controversy, the latest of which being the abrupt firing of the elementary school’s beloved principal. Officials recently announced that principal’s replacement, former Chula Vista Elementary HR Director Jorge Mora. If that name rings a bell, it’s because an investigation by our Jim Hinch found that during his tenure at Chula Vista, Mora failed to report an instance of educator misconduct to state regulators.
For years, Chula Vista Elementary officials felt immune from the declining enrollment that’s washed over regional schools. After all, the district served what has long been the fastest growing city in San Diego County. Over the past couple of years though, the number of students enrolling at schools has dropped even in Chula Vista. Now, faced with a more than $33 million budget deficit, officials are blaming the fiscal woes on enrollment decline and the expiration of Covid-era funds.