A Day in the Lives of Our Kids

A big chunk of every San Diegan’s tax bill goes toward funding education in the county’s 634 public schools. Several thousand of these taxpayers each pay thousands more to send their children to private schools in the county. What’s the difference between the public- and private-school classrooms? Do parents get what they pay for?

To find out, San Diego Magazine visited two fifth-grade classrooms for a school day in late January: the San Diego Unified School District’s Sequoia Elementary in the north Clairemont area, and Francis Parker Lower School in Mission Hills. The latter costs about $12,000 in tuition per year, per student.

The Schools

Located in a middle-class area, Sequoia enrolls 380 students in kindergarten through sixth grade. It is built in the functional but minimal style of the 1960s. A freestanding small library building was added last year that includes a media center with computers. About 45 percent of the student body is non-Caucasian, and many families in the neighborhood have parents who both work.

The lower school for Francis Parker incorporates kindergarten through fifth grade; this year it enrolls 420 students, 27 percent of whom are non-Caucasian. Thirty percent of the school’s enrollment receives some form of financial aid. The Spanish-style complex has been occupied by Francis Parker since 1913.

At both schools, teachers and administrators say they have “very supportive parents” who volunteer in classrooms and attend school functions.

The Principals

Susan Izu has been Sequoia’s principal for 11 years. She’s a former kindergarten/first grade teacher.

Robert Gillingham has been at Francis Parker 27 years. He started as a school-bus driver, taught for a number of years and has been principal of the lower school for 12 years.

The Teachers

A former substitute teacher for five years, Colleen Draper has taught full-time at Sequoia for eight years. She attended the school when she was in sixth grade.

Nancy Hughes has been teaching elementary school since the mid-1970s and has been at Francis Parker, her first private school, for five years.

Both teachers are certified to teach gifted children.

The average annual salary for a San Diego city schools teacher in the elementary grades is $53,954. Principal Gillingham acknowledges that teachers in private schools generally are paid less than their public school counterparts. At Francis Parker, each teacher negotiates his or her contract with the school administration.

The Classrooms

Except for the addition of technology, not much has changed in the look of a classroom in the past 30 years. Several students sit at long, rectangular desks; chairs are molded plastic. Hughes’ classroom is larger and more airy than Draper’s, but both rooms hold shelves of books, examples of students’ writing and artwork, maps and other learning aids.

Draper’s class at Sequoia has one district-supplied computer. Four additional computers were donated by a parent but are not currently used because Draper says she needs to buy ink for the printer. She estimates she spends about $1,000 a year of her own money for various supplies and learning enhancements.

In Hughes’ class, there are five permanent computers, and each student has access to a laptop Macintosh for use in class. Hughes says all of her requests for additional materials or supplies have been granted and paid for by the school.

The Students

Draper has 30 students in class, and occasionally four or five students from another classroom attend one of her lessons. One boy in the class recently re-enrolled in the school after spending six months in Mexico. A native Spanish speaker, he has lost his English-language skills, and Draper doesn’t speak Spanish. She, principal Izu and several classmates will spend time to help orient the child.

Academically, Draper says, her students are average achievers. At the start of the school year, she adds, she had her highest-achieving students moved to a combination fifth/sixth-grade class.

Hughes has 23 fifth-graders at Francis Parker who have been in her class since the start of the school year. She describes the students as high-achieving. Per school policy, students wear uniforms in a variety of styles.

The Lessons

In keeping with the reform-minded Blueprint for Student Success now in use in the city school district, Draper’s morning schedule at Sequoia includes a three-hour reading, writing and math block, broken up by a 20-minute recess. (Prior to Blueprint implementation, teachers had more flexibility to set their own schedules.) School begins at 7:55 a.m.

On this day, reading and language arts focuses on poetry (“The Eagle” by Alfred Lord Tennyson), literal language and imagery. Students read both silently and aloud, and the class discusses “What fictional character would you like to have live next door?” Draper works individually at her desk with several young readers. The kids also discuss the children’s mini-page in the daily newspaper.

The math component includes estimation and “patterns in multiples.” There also is instruction in fractions, ratios, percentages and algebra. The latter, Draper says, is introduced to students in the fourth grade. There are a lot of at-desk and on-the-board math problems.

Following lunch, half of the class goes to band instruction, and the remainder stays for a science segment that today focuses on mixtures and solutions. Draper says she will wait till the following day, when the whole class is together, for the hands-on science project. All fourth- and fifth-graders at Sequoia attend a band class—now a rarity in most city schools—twice a week; all Sequoia sixth-graders receive a small guitar and are given instruction, thanks to a donation by Taylor Guitar Company.

When the band students return, the class settles down for a one-hour social studies lesson, which today discusses the Northwest Passage, Henry Hudson and native Americans along Chesapeake Bay. The evening’s homework assignments are reviewed, and the kids have a 25-minute physical education class on the playground. School is dismissed at 2:25 p.m.

For Hughes’ class at Francis Parker, physical education starts the school day at 8:15 a.m., and classroom instruction begins at 9. This day’s schedule includes philosophy, in which students discuss the quote “Education is the movement from darkness to light”; WordMasters vocabulary; individual and group reading of The Witch of Blackbird Pond, an ongoing and detailed social studies segment that requires students to “create a colony”; and “math power,” for which the lesson involves dividing fractions. Students also discuss, at length, articles in the Scholastic newspaper, including stories about North Korea and Iraq. A 25-minute study hall concludes the day, and school is dismissed at 3 p.m.

During each week, Hughes’ students also study science, wood shop, art, drama, Spanish, music and technology. Each Monday, principal Gillingham, who holds a Ph.D., teaches a one-hour ethics course, which is taught at all grade levels.

The Teachers’ Strategies

Draper and Hughes are cheerful, high-energy teachers, and both invariably praise students for their correct work and offer much encouragement in helping students find the right answers. Throughout all lessons, the teachers have their pupils explain the processes by which they are figuring out answers. They also are extremely efficient at keeping the students’ attention and managing the classroom.

Draper uses a timer for some lessons, and she has a student-popular “tribal bead” reward system, whereby students can become “all-stars” and earn extra privileges.

During the day, Hughes often calls her class to form a semicircle on the floor by her desk so she and the students can discuss a lesson in an intimate manner. She also speaks softly, when she suspects a student’s interest may be wavering, to help regain attention.

Sequoia’s Colleen Draper says:

“It’s hard to try to fit in everything in the time we have and still be able to give each student individual attention.”

“When you see it in the kids’ faces—when you see that light click on for them—my feet don’t touch the ground, because I know they’re going to keep what they’ve just learned.”

“Sometimes I feel the Blueprint is too rigid. ... Someone who doesn’t know my kids should not be telling me about my kids.”

Francis Parker’s Nancy Hughes says:

“This is a wonderful place to teach. The kids are here because they and their families value education. The school is strongly academic, plus it has a strong community and ethics component. And it gives scholarships; I really like that.”

“The school administration sincerely values your professional wisdom. They give us a huge amount of flexibility.”

“The students’ level of experience and awareness is higher than the average, and so their expectations for what they want to get out of education are higher. I really see myself as working with future potential leaders.”

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