Few families make use of school transfer option

Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2005 | 9:23 a.m.

Just 897 out of a possible 27,100 families took the Clark County School District up on an offer to transfer their children from low-performing schools to more successful campuses for the 2005-06 academic year, district officials said Tuesday.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, school districts must offer transfers to students at Title I schools that fail to make "adequate yearly progress" for at least two consecutive years.

Schools with higher percentages of students qualifying for free and reduced-price meals receive extra federal Title I funding for programs and services.

Students at 24 elementary schools and nine middle schools were offered transfers, said Mark Lange, director of Title I compliance for the district. The district does not have any Title I high schools.

The final number of students who actually go through with the transfers won't be known for several weeks. And it appears some may have changed their minds already, Lange said.

"We had 64 kids who sent in the (transfer request) cards, we arranged transportation for them and they showed up yesterday at their neighborhood schools instead," Lange said.

Some parents may be reluctant to send their children, particularly those in elementary school, out of the neighborhood for what may be a lengthy bus ride, said Charlene Green, associate superintendent of the district's student support services division.

Transfer students must be sent to a school that is relatively close to their original school. The new school must be succeeding academically and have seats available. Finding campuses to meet the criteria is a challenge, Green said.

While the district provides transportation to and from school for the transfer students, parents are responsible for making their own way to the campus in the event that their child needs to be picked up during the day.

"If a student is sick, it's the parents' responsibility to arrange their own transportation to the school and get them," Green said. "For some people, that can be a real complication."

Parents have also said they are satisfied with the quality of education their children are receiving at their neighborhood school, despite the "needs improvement" label, Green said.

As in past years, the largest number of transfer requests came from students at West-Edison Middle School, with 290 requests. West-Edison students transferred to Lawrence, Seville, Cadwallader and Molasky middle schools.

West-Edison is one of seven campuses managed for the School District by Edison Schools Inc.

Jimmie Jones, who is starting his second year as principal of West-Edison, said the school is in the midst of a dramatic turnaround. Student test scores for the 2004-05 academic year improved 37 percent in math, 35 percent in reading and 33 percent in writing, Jones said.

While that wasn't enough for the school to make "adequate yearly progress" and begin to working its way off the state's list of "needs improvement" campuses, Jones said he expects West-Edison to continue its upward climb this year.

Less staff turnover and fewer substitute teachers may help the school reach that goal.

In the 2003-04 academic year the school operated with 16 to 18 long-term substitutes teaching core subjects, and 25 full-time teachers opted not to return after the summer, Jones said. This year just four teachers have not returned and the school has just one long-term substitute assigned to a core subject, Jones said.

"Those numbers are due to the school climate, the working conditions and the hard work of the students and the teachers," said Jones, who came to Clark County from Baltimore last summer. "This is a very fine school."

The highest number of elementary transfer requests came from Twin Lakes Elementary School, with 28. Those students were given a choice of attending Wasden or Ober Elementary School.

Leary Adams, now in his fifth year as principal of Twin Lakes, said Tuesday he was surprised to learn his campus had led the transfer request list.

"Last year I think we had about six (requests)," Adams said.

There were few phone calls from the parents of the school's 500 students after the transfer notification letters went out earlier this summer, Adams said.

"I think most of our parents have a lot of confidence in our school," Adams said.

By law the district is required to set aside 10 percent of its total Title I budget to pay for transportation costs associated with school choice. Last year that amounted to $5 million out of a total budget of $50 million.

The district provided transfers to 726 students at a cost of $612,328, Lange said. The remainder of the transportation funds were later used for other programs and services at Title I schools.

The district must also set aside 10 percent of the Title I dollars for supplemental services, 10 percent for staff development, 5 percent to help teachers meet the federal "highly qualified" requirements and 1 percent for parent outreach.

Federal education law allows Title I funds to be directed to schools where the number of students qualifying for free and reduced-priced meals is at least at the districtwide average.

In Clark County half of the schools met or exceeded the districtwide average of 44.4 percent, Lange said.

Technically the district could spread out the Title I dollars at more than 150 schools, but the allocations wouldn't be large enough to make much of a difference, Lange said. Instead the district has identified 57 schools this year, each with at least 70 percent of its students on the meal program, to receive Title I aid.

That's an increase of nine campuses over the 2004-05 academic year, Lange said.

"We wish we had enough Title I money to go around," Lange said. "Right now the best we can do is concentrate on spending it where we believe it will do the most good."