On Tuesday, Dec. 10, the School Site Council (SSC) met to guide Redwood’s education planning process to ensure that all students’ needs are met. The SSC is composed of student, teacher and parent representatives who work together to tackle school matters with student-minded solutions and approaches.
Starting with the testing, Principal Barnaby Payne presented interactive visuals about the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASP) scores. In previous years, participation was below the threshold needed to authenticate CAASP scores. 2024 proved differently, with 95 percent of juniors participating. As a result, data dashboard scores have significantly improved.
According to current academic data and indicators, English Language Arts (ELA) comprehension increased by 52.9 points, math comprehension increased by 101 points, and college career and academic engagement, with the rest of those categories, are now back in the blue — the indication of highest performance on the five-color scale. However, a 1.9 percent suspension rate —- a high rate on the orange side of the scale— led to slight concern about the disciplinary environment at Redwood.
While evaluating what comes up in searches for Redwood on social media, results such as a popular TikTok sharing the best high schools in California according to the Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT), which put Redwood in 12th place, led the council to discuss where these metrics are coming from and what the metrics are based on. Another similar Instagram Reel evaluating California high schools with the most challenging graduation requirements ranked Redwood among the top 15.
Based on the AP School Honor Roll Progress Report, Redwood has been named a Platinum Advanced Placement (AP) school. Over 80 percent of the class of 2025 will have taken at least one AP course before graduating and will have at least one score of three, which allows them to count for college credit, and 33 percent took as many as five AP classes throughout their high school careers.
“We have very high access [to our AP program] and very high success within our AP program. It continues to be a point of strength at Redwood,” Payne said.
The California Department of Education requires schools to administer a school climate survey to assess factors such as mental health, feelings of safety at school and more. In October, students, staff, and families took a YouthTruth survey to report feedback. Payne presented the results at the meeting, displaying positive and negative feedback responses and showing how student data can be interpreted.
Payne pointed out responses to the “Student’s Belonging” category– where the lowest-rated student responses could be found in response to the prompt, “I can be myself around other students.” “When students' scores go down, we want to know what is happening,” Payne said.
In response, Spanish teacher and Redwood parent Tristan Bodle, gave insight to give on the issue of students not feeling like they can be themselves. Referencing a novel by Malcolm Gladwell titled, “Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering,” Bodle pointed out that Redwood’s competitive nature can often lead students to feel left out.
“There is a school that sounds a lot like Redwood [in the novel,] which deals with that cultural issues where kids are feeling there is a lot of conformity in a high-achieving community; everybody is taking APs, everybody has high ambitions of what colleges they want to go to,” Bodle said. “There isn't a lot of breathing room for kids to just be different and follow their own passions on this race to nowhere trying to get into the best colleges, trying to take a million APs.”
Responses to the category evaluating having relationships with classmates and feeling included sparked discussion, especially when evaluating the question, “I really feel like part of my school community. " The lowest responses were from 2.88 percent of Black or African-American and American Indian, Alaska Native or Indigenous, and 2.96 percent of LGBTQ+ respondents.
“What are we going to do about [low student engagement?] The whole point of this conversation is: how does this data inform our practices? How does this inform our actions as a school? Not as a Site Council, as teachers, students and parents; how do we correct the disproportionately that we see,” Payne said.
While discussing reasons for students feeling like they don’t belong, parents like Joanna Zola gave their perspectives on what they can do to help support their children's mental health.
“Maybe there could be some parental conversation when [student’s] parents ask if [they] are okay. And what does that even mean to ask if [students are okay? Maybe parents don't know how to have those conversations,” Zola said.
Pointing at the data, parent Hill Chau Pashalides added to the parent discussion. “One thing [we need to do] is to ask the kids what they need to belong,” Pashalides said.
Senior SSC representative Kiera Lensing chimed into the conversation about how students can interact based on the Link Crew class, where one of the main incentives is to get freshmen to collaborate during orientation.
“The Link Crew forces you to get to know people, and more forced interaction with people you may not be around could be the best way to make the student body feel welcomed,” Lensing said.
As the students followed Lensing’s lead and added to the conversation, the freshman SSC student representative Lily Scott, who had orientation only a few months ago, gave her insight on Link Crew and their positive impact. “When I see [my orientation group] in the hallways or in my classes, I say hi. I think that is very helpful,” said freshman SSC representative Lily Scott.
Credits:
Emily Hitchcock