Compton Unified’s Commitment to Excellence Honored

The Compton Unified School District has been placed on the Sixth Annual AP® Honor Roll list by the College Board. We are one of 425 School Districts to be honored this year.

Your high schools are being recognized for both increasing the number of students who are enrolling and successfully completing Advanced Placement (AP) classes. AP classes can be as challenging as introductory college courses. They are fast-paced, cover more material than traditional courses, and require independent work like research, writing, and analysis.

While students from all backgrounds can benefit from taking challenging coursework in high school, data from 2015 show that among African American, Hispanic, and Native American students with the potential to succeed in AP, only about half take AP courses.

I believe strongly that EVERY child has the capacity to succeed in school and in life. It is why we live by the motto of having our students “college and career” ready. And we know (and believe) that if students are given the opportunity to succeed at the highest level, many will seize the opportunity.

It is why increasing the number of students who take and succeed in AP was a goal that we outlined in our Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP), which we adopted after engaging parents, educators, employees and the community.

Inclusion on the Sixth Annual AP District Honor Roll is based on the examination of three years of AP data from 2013 to 2015. These nationwide measurable achievements in AP classes are noteworthy and newsworthy.

It was Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. who said “Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.” He wrote that in 1947 when he was in college. If he wrote it today, he would say “a man and a woman.” But the message is clear. For our children to succeed, they must be put in opportunities to succeed.

That’s what we are doing every single day at Compton Unified. Congratulations to our hard working young men and women and their teachers and parents for making us all proud.

2016 Begins and So Do We

Welcome back to school. I hope that all the families of Compton had an enjoyable holiday break. We are ready to get back to work --- and know that our students, teachers and staff are poised for a great second half of the school year.

We will continue our efforts to increase graduation rates in the Compton School District. Teachers and administrators are working with our students, particularly those who are struggling in the classroom to continue the upward trend in high school graduation rates that we’ve enjoyed in recent years. Earlier intervention with students whose grades are below a “C” has been helping students improve. We’ll continue that tactic.
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I hope you’ve had a chance to see the new look underway at Emerson Elementary and Bunche Middle School. Since the holiday break we’ve been put the finishing touches on new fields at the two schools. The transformation is remarkable. We continue to upgrade our facilities at the Compton schools knowing that when you transform how a school looks, you often transform the school itself.
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One of the big issues facing us in the classroom is the adoption of new Language Arts materials for our students. We’ll be informing you about that in the coming days and weeks.

Did you know that students who are involved in extracurricular activities do better in the classroom? If your child isn’t involved in some activity in school, urge him or her to do so.

Finally, congratulations to School Board Member Satra Zurita who was elected the new President of the School Board in December. Also, it’s a pleasure to welcome Sandra Moss, our newly elected board member.  We look forward to working with them and all our school board members to make sure that our students (and your children) are college and career ready.
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Happy New Year!