Counselors, Catching Up Credits, Late Start Law & Virtual Enrollment

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Counselors, Catching Up Credits, Late Start Law & Virtual Enrollment Drop

Q&A With Dr. Michelle Rodriguez, Superintendent, Pajaro Valley Unified School District

You stated that you have increased the number of social emotional supports for students. What are the numbers, and do you have any vacancies in those areas?

PVUSD has significantly increased the number of social emotional counselors and mental health clinicians in our schools. Below are the correct numbers noted in the 2022 State of the District. We currently have one opening for a social emotional counselor due to a promotion that occurred in October.

We are fully staffed and do not have any vacancies/openings for academic (school) counselors or mental health clinicians. We currently have 16 PVUSD school psychologists, 3 school psychologists interns and 3 licensed school psychologists through established agencies to ensure students receive the needed services.

PVUSD is also very unique as our students have the support of our dedicated non-profit agency, Pajaro Valley Prevention and Student Assistance. Through PVPSA, students and families are provided with additional mental health services.

Why is PVUSD and PVPSA not supporting Linscott students with a social emotional counselor? Linscott still falls under PVUSD’s umbrella and PVPSA is community-based program. OT and speech from PVUSD support Linscott.

Linscott is an independent charter school which receives its own funding separate from PVUSD. Linscott determines through their own administration and Board how they spend their funding allocation. It is at their discretion whether the staff that they hire includes social-emotional counselors.

As PVUSD has its own SELPA, we provide special education services to all students living within the PVUSD boundaries including students attending Linscott. Therefore, we do provide limited special services to qualifying Linscott students.

I just received a call from school saying my child is missing class and homework. How do I keep track of my child’s grades and attendance?

You can download ParentVUE, an app that goes right on your phone. With ParentVUE you can access your child’s grades, class attendance, connect with teachers, and more.

If you need support using the app, please feel free to come to the College and Career Center at your child’s high school and a staff member will be able to help.

My student is deficient in credits and may not graduate. What resources can I link my students up to to get them back on track?

PVUSD is committed to supporting both the student and their family to recover the necessary credits to graduate. The pandemic threw many students off course, so PVUSD has focused these past few years on getting students caught up.

We host a number of credit recovery options, such as Winter Session, Edgenuity, tutoring through Paper, and options to allow more underclassmen students to attend summer credit recovery sessions.

Students who are off track should check in with their academic counselor or stop by the College and Career Center to meet with a college facilitator who can map out a plan for them to graduate on time and be eligible for college. While they are there, have them sign up for free after school tutoring as well!

My child has been recommended for Renaissance but is resistant to switching schools. How do I show them transferring could help?

Renaissance High School is one of PVUSD’s great resources to help students struggling with high school get back on track for graduation. The school focuses on credit recovery with a staff dedicated to providing customized alternative education with lower class sizes.

At Renaissance High School, students are able to receive more educational options than they might receive in our comprehensive high schools. For example, accelerated tracks to make up credits or low grades that are not available in high schools are available at Renaissance. While at Renaissance, students set goals to help them succeed as they work toward graduation and college.

I would encourage you to talk with your student’s counselor to learn more about Renaissance, and possibly even visit the campus.

I want to know if they’re going to continue with late start and late ending of the high school level. Getting out at 3:45 is very hard for appointments for students from doctors, orthodontist, counseling it is getting harder to get these done, not to mention the homework load. For students who take the bus in the A.M they still have to get up early. So saying they need more sleep is a contradiction. Can a petition be started for this to go back to normal hours? I am sure you and your staff like to be off work at your given time of the day so would other professional workers. Thank you for your time.

The delayed start time for middle and high school students is driven by California state legislation, Senate Bill 328. In 2019, California legislators passed a firstof-its-kind law requiring that public high schools begin classes no earlier than 8:30 a.m., and that middle schools start no earlier than 8 a.m. by the 2022- 2023 school year.

PVUSD and all other school districts in California have moved back the time. With the required instructional minutes, students now leave school approximately one hour later than previous years.

Unless legislation changes, PVUSD will continue with the current arrival and dismissal times for the upcoming school year for secondary students.

My student is a first grader in the Virtual Academy, and has been since kindergarten. One of the reasons we decided to keep him in VA this year is because we loved his kindergarten teacher, Ms. Klein, and she was teaching first grade this year. However, we were suddenly informed in October that Ms. Klein was being displaced. Could you go into the reasons for reassigning a teacher in the middle of a semester with no warning, especially when a child has been with a teach for over a year? My student went from being in a manageable class with kindergartners and first graders to being in a big class with K-4s. Thank you.

PVUSD created Virtual Academy as an option for families that wanted an alternative to in-person learning and a school that allows more flexibility and acceleration. Over the last two years, Virtual Academy has seen a significant drop in elementary enrollment.

We originally maintained the 5 elementary teachers and the site increased recruitment efforts. However, at the time of the shift, Virtual Academy had only 39 elementary students and 5 elementary teachers, which meant extremely small class sizes.

Virtual Academy still has 3 elementary teachers to support those 39 students, which results in comparatively low class sizes. As the Virtual Academy is a different online structure than a regular classroom, a teacher can manage a wider range of grades.

What is going on with students not coming to school? It is very difficult to teach a student that pops in every few weeks. It seems there are no consequences to students taking a lot of days off school.

Our attendance this year is similar to last year. California compulsory education law requires that everyone between the ages of 6 and 18 years of age attend school every day. The following criteria classifies students as truant: 1) Absent from school without a valid excuse for three full days in one school year 2) Tardy or absent for more than a 30-minute period during the school day without a valid excuse on three occasions in one school year 3) Or any combination thereof

As a district we have a truancy notification system that allows us to inform families when their student has been classified as truant. The truancy notification contains specific information related to the student’s absences and the first step in helping remedy the attendance concerns. Families are provided with three truancy notification letters before they are referred to our School Attendance Review Board.

Our School Attendance Review Board meetings are held on a monthly basis for students who have received the third truancy letter and have had no improvement in their attendance. Our SARB committee is composed of representatives from various youth-serving agencies, as well as site level staff. The intent is to help truant students and their parents/guardians solve school attendance problems through the use of available school and community resources.

Although the goal of SARBs is to keep students in school and provide them with a meaningful educational experience, SARBs do have the power, when necessary, to refer students and their parents/ guardians to court. Often teachers are the first identifiers of truant students and can be the first ones to intervene by reaching out to the families.

We highly encourage staff to consult with site administration and/or site attendance monitors when they come across students who are truant. If appropriate, they should be sending the truancy letter notifications home and referring students to SARB.

Students with significant attendance issues should also be referred to the Site Wellness Team so they can engage with the student and family to identify any underlying concerns causing the poor attendance.