Commentary: Westside needs a dual-language charter school

Here is what Caryn Blanton is not: She is not a crazed activist promoting untested ideas for improving schools on Costa Mesa’s Westside, and she is not a front for some organization that stands to profit from improving those schools.

Blanton is the youth development director for Mika Community Development Corp. and a fixture on the Westside. She has a deep, focused understanding of the Westside culture, and she sees what many Costa Mesans have seen for years: severely underperforming Westside elementary schools that the school board is either unable or unwilling to fix.

Blanton has a proven idea she’d like to see implemented: She wants to start a dual-language charter school on the Westside.

The three Westside facilities I have been monitoring for many years are Wilson, Pomona and Whittier elementary schools. Each location has a School Accountability Report Card that provides data on the school’s performance. The yardstick I prefer is the Academic Performance Index, which uses a 1-10 scale, with 10 being high, to show how well a school is performing compared with similar schools in the state.

For the last reporting period, school year 2012-13, Wilson’s API score was 5, while Pomona and Whittier each earned a 3. These numbers are bad, but they’re worse when put into context: Pomona’s 3 is down from a high of 5 in 2010, and Whittier’s 3 is down from a high score of 4 in 2010.

“They’re not behind,” Blanton told me recently. “They’re failing.”

When Wilson’s 5 is the best score for the three schools in several years, something is clearly wrong, and you’d think that the school board would welcome a bona fide opportunity to attempt to succeed where it has not. But you’d be wrong.

In her response to the charter school proposal, school board President Karen Yelsey told the Daily Pilot, “The charter might not be necessary, considering the language programs that the district is planning to implement in elementary schools within the next few years.”

What is not shocking is the failure to engage the community to hear what people want. The school board has been good about reaching out to residents on soft issues, such as whether to adjust the school calendar and what qualities to look for in a new principal for Victoria Elementary School.

But you won’t see any community-input meetings for a Westside charter school. Charter schools are a threat to a school board’s power and control and are not likely to be embraced any time soon.

There is no guarantee of success for this charter school. But this one could succeed, in part because it is community-based. As Blanton said of the Westside residents, “They know us and they trust us.”

Unfortunately, it looks like the school board is circling the wagons once again, and Westside residents will just have to wait a few years until the board’s planning process is over.

Costa Mesa resident and Fairview Park Citizens Advisory Committee member STEVE SMITH is a former Daily Pilot columnist.