Seaside, CALIF-Friday we are going in depth at Highland Elementary and Martin Luther King Jr. School. Central Coast News found out there are some drastic changes to improve that you may not know about.
One of the biggest changes happening in the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District for next year is happening at the Martin Luther King Jr. School. Currently it's a school for kindergarten through 8th graders but next year it's only going to be kindergarten through 5th grade. The rest of the students will go to a Seaside middle school.
"We have already begun out plans to restructure the schools so we can give our students the age appropriate curriculum that they need," said Associate Superintendent Kari Yeater.
The district says the K-8 atmosphere was a contributing factor to Martin Luther King Jr. School students under achieving in the classroom but there are other challenges for the school and its students, "They are coming from low income families and they speak different languages and so really putting in good quality programs to really make sure they are proficient is our goal," said Yeater.
The district is also taking a new approach to meet students needs, "In public education we tend to have allocated out similar resources based on numbers of students and now we need to allocate resources based on what the students need," said Yeater.
At Highland Elementary administrators say next year they are really going to focus on intervention programs trying to get at risk students to do well in the classroom at an early age. Teachers at
Highland are meeting weekly for training and Principle Taffra Purnsley says more parents are stepping up and asking how they can help, "I think there's a sense of optimism. They recognize what we're doing to turn things around and to improve test scores and I think to maintain what we're doing," said Purnsley.
The school district hopes that by making the curriculum more active and standard based the students will soon be on track, "It's very integrated with technology and that's really a motivation and an engagement for students," said Yeater.
