The State of Millbrae Schools: My Notes from the Millbrae Town Hall Meeting on February 25th

The schools in Millbrae are doing great but need to do even better as schools of the 21^st century, according Superintendent Luna’s assessment at the Millbrae Town Hall Meeting on February 25th. I attended the meeting at Taylor Middle School, both as a Millbrae homeowner and a concerned parent, as well as a local real estate broker in an area where many people buy homes because of the excellent reputation of the schools here. Some notes:

- Student achievement: For the first time, the Millbrae Elementary School District (which includes Taylor Middle School) achieved an API score of 900. This is not an easy standing to achieve, and places the district as 9^th in the county.

- School safety: There will be a one-time process of fingerprinting and livescan checks within the district for all volunteers. By “one-time process”, this means that once a person has gone through this check, they will be cleared for the duration that they are within the district. The district is working on making this process more accessible for all parents.

- Fiscal solvency continues to be a main issue. The recently passed Proposition 30 only “stopped the bleeding”, which means that it helped avert a budget cut of $957K that would have happened in January. It is projected that it will take up to seven years to be able to ‘stop the bleeding’ completely, which basically means that we will be restored to the funding levels of 2007-2008.

- If the governor’s budget passes in June, this will mean that there will be a little more funding for the districts and thus no staff cuts. At the same time, class sizes will need to remain the same even though they are the highest in the county.

Much of the remainder of the meeting was about the changes for the 21^st century. All schools will be now working according to a Common Core standard which is effective immediately but which will not be seen in terms of testing (Smarter Balanced Assessments) until 2015. At that point, the API scores and STAR testing as we know it will go away and be replaced by the new assessments, which will place more emphasis on critical thinking skills, as opposed to simply memorizing facts. In addition, there is definitely a greater need for advancement in technology in the classrooms.

The majority of the questions were with regard to the parcel tax issue. Out of 23 districts in the county, only three do not have a parcel tax, and this will be the third try (as far as I can remember) to pass one in Millbrae. At this point, there are no specifics as to what a parcel tax initiative would entail. The next steps are for talks with consultants and then a public survey, which will be used to determine how to move forward from there.

I’m sure most people agree that schools are important, whether one has children currently attending or not. On the other hand, the economy has taken its toll on everyone, and it is not easy to swallow another addition to already high property taxes, bonds, etc. The main question for many people will center around what the funds will be used for and making sure that there is good accountability for those funds. I hope many Millbrae residents will take the time to be involved in future meetings and the public survey to come, as this is an issue that can affect us in so many ways, and I’ll do my best to help keep folks updated as this progresses.  You can find my latest blog posts, including updates on this topic at: http://8z.com/blog/author/jeanjoh/