Los Alamitos High School, McAuliffe Middle School, and Oak Middle School were among the 31 Orange County schools to receive the 2009 California Distinguished Schools Award. Oak Middle School is now in line to win an unprecedented third top National award in a row.
The top National school award is the National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence, given by the United States Department of Education. To be eligible for the National award, a school must first be recognized as a state Distinguished School. These schools may then compete for the National honor. Each school is eligible to win the state award no more often than every 4 years.
Los Alamitos Unified’s Oak Middle School has received both the State Distinguished Schools Award and the National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence award for the last two cycles in which the school was eligible (2002 and 2006). With the award of the California Distinguished Schools award for this year, Oak Middle School has a chance to win the National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence for a third time in 2010.
“At Oak, we’re very excited with the prospective of being made a Blue Ribbon school next year, again for the third consecutive time which is very unique. We’re very excited about that possibility.” Said Sally Neiser, Oak Middle School Principal. One of the programs to which she attributed the award is the Jane Shaffer Writing Program. Neiser said “Since we’ve adopted that program, our scores have increased from between 40 and 50% of our students scoring proficient and advanced, to last year, 93% scoring proficient and advanced
This is the fourth time Los Alamitos High School has received the California Distinguished School award.
The last year in which Los Alamitos High School received the award was 1998. The High School also won the National Blue Ribbon award in that year. Principal Kelly Godfrey identified the use of data through a program known as the Data Director, for helping improve student performance. He said the data helps identify in detail where improvements in teaching are needed and then “Teachers write action plans for the following year to address where the students did poorly.”
McAuliffe Middle School was awarded the California Distinguished Schools Award in 1996, and again in 2003. Principal Dennis Sackett attributed his award to a school wide culture where “failure is not an option…staff come together. They share ideas, they share student work, they share student performance, they check data. In the process of checking all this data, they find out things they can do to become stronger in the classroom and help the kids become better performers. We hold kids accountable and responsible for what they do in school. We call it Taking Care Business–TCB. If you’re not Taking Care Business, you don’t get to participate in extracurricular activities. We Call this program SEACAP, Student extracurricular activity Participation. For students to participate in activities at school, they have to earn that privilege, earn the right to do so. If you don’t take care business, in terms of behavior, then you don’t get to participate. We don’t have sports, but we have lots of activities.. we have lunch time activities, we have field trips, participation in band, participation in choral groups, going to the California Science Center, we have groups that just came in from the Getty Museum, we go to performances around the county, but, to participate in those things, you have to pass all your classes, and not just the academics. We feel we have a huge responsibility to get them ready for the next level and to get them ready for life. We can’t let them down. If we don’t hold them responsible, then we’re failing the kids. So, failure is not an option. We’re going to do everything we can to help kids be successful in class. We’ll work with kids, we’ll work after school, we’ll work weekends with them, during the school day.” we’re not going to let them fail.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O’Connell, said in announcing the awards, “California Distinguished Schools must meet the challenge of providing all their students with a rigorous education and to fully prepare today’s students for success in postsecondary education or the workforce. In an increasingly competitive global economy, it is important that the academic success of all of today’s students is directly linked to the effectiveness, competitiveness, and resiliency of our not-too-distant future workforce.”
Of California’s nearly 2,400 middle and high schools, only 341 schools met the minimum eligibility criteria based on their student achievement. Of those eligible schools, 261 were selected as 2009 California Distinguished schools. The California Department of Education will select 35 of the 2009 California Distinguished Schools to apply for the National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence award. An awards ceremony honoring the Distinguished Schools will be held Friday, May 29 at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.
The list of 136 middle schools and 125 high schools may be viewed at: 2009 Distinguished Middle and High Schools – California School Recognition Program.
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About Dolores Barr, Publisher
Dolores Barr has lived in Rossmoor since 1992 and has created this site to provide local news for the people of Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Rossmoor, Leisure World, Sunset Beach, and Surfside, California. My husband and I have had two students graduate from the Los Alamitos Unified School District and currently our Grandson, Ricky Apodaca, grade 3 at Weaver Elementary, is actively involved in youth baseball through LAYB and youth football through FNL.
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