JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - Before she stepped foot in her AVID class, attending college had never crossed Adrianna D’Cafango’s mind. In fact, “I didn’t know what a GPA was,” the Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School eighth-grader said.
Now, she said, she embodies the mantra emblazoned on the back of her blue AVID sweatshirt, the one she had to land a 3.0 GPA to get her hands on: “School is my job now.”
The 1.7 GPA of her sixth-grade year is now a distant memory. Eighth grade is the year of the 3.5, she said. She’s set her sights on college and plans to major in something science related, perhaps anatomy.
“In seventh grade, I would float through life,” D’Cafango said. “Now I get things done.”
D’Cafango is one of about 300 Juneau School District students enrolled in AVID, or Advancement Via Individual Determination, a national college readiness program for which the district pays membership fees and trains school staff, the Juneau Empire (https://bit.ly/1cTS9rS) reported.
But with a total price tag of $440,645 in the district’s FY 2015 budget, which includes salaries for AVID teachers - the program is a big-ticket item, and one the community budget committee thinks should be eliminated completely.
District administrators, principals, teachers and students have spoken against cutting the program, saying the benefits outweigh the costs. DHMS Principal Molly Yerkes said the program - which focuses on close reading, note-taking, critical thinking and organization - often provides the extra boost students need to succeed. She said students who, without AVID, made Bs and Cs in regular classes, often are able to transition to advanced classes.
“I have seen students who were doing fine enter the AVID program and do great,” Yerkes said.
Juneau’s schools are among the approximately 4,900 schools around the country that participate in AVID, according to the program’s website. The program is in place in various forms in the district, both as stand-alone classes and embedded in everyday lessons. At Riverbend Elementary, two fourth grade teachers and two fifth grade teachers incorporate the AVID model into their lessons. It’s the only Juneau elementary school that participates in AVID, said Patty Newsman, district director of teaching and learning.
AVID is offered as a free-standing elective at all the middle and high schools. At DHMS and Floyd Dryden Middle School, all sixth-graders take AVID for a quarter. Seventh and eighth graders must either apply or be selected for the class.
DHMS’ Randy Quinto is one of the district’s full-time AVID instructors. A physical education teacher by training, Quinto switched to heading up AVID at the school. He acknowledged being a bit skeptical at first, but once he experienced the training, he believed the program would work for Juneau’s students.
“I have a passion for this, rather than P.E., where I’m going to reach only a certain number of kids,” Quinto said as his seventh-grade AVID students wrote quietly. “Here, I reach them all.”
At the start of AVID class Monday, Quinto’s teacher aid, D’Cafango, checked the students’ binders, filled with their classwork, writing utensils and, most importantly, their planners. Although D’Cafango struggled in AVID during seventh grade and was almost dropped from the program, she kicked it up a notch and was so successful she was asked to help Quinto teach the eighth-graders.
The students’ homework planners, along with their grades signed by their parents, are important in the AVID program, Quinto said. The program has five main foci: writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization and reading, Quinto said. The most important of these at the middle school level is organization, he said.
“As I’ve taught it, it’s not a college prep thing, it’s a life skills thing,” he said.
Students apply and interview to be placed in the class, but are also referred by their teachers based on a few criteria, including a history of high test scores but low grades and being the first in their family who would attend college, Quinto said.
Quinto’s classroom is decorated with Technicolor student artwork bearing inspirational messages, and college insignia from all over the country. The wall outside his classroom is lined with handmade college pennants, created by his seventh-grade students.
He said middle school isn’t too early to start talking about college with kids. By the time they hit high school, they should know what the credit requirements are for the colleges they might want to attend.
“They might not have the resources to go, they might not have the grades to go,” Quinto said, “but feeding them that thought of college” early can motivate some students to get their acts together in time.
“The growth of these students is enormous. We’re not warming seats anymore, and it’s going to pay dividends later.”
Behind the numbers
The district is behind AVID because it’s “proven to be successful,” Yerkes said. Numbers from the district show that AVID students attend school at a slightly higher rate than non-AVID students. AVID students are also more likely to be enrolled in one or more honors or AP courses (34 percent) compared to non-AVID students (23 percent). However, they’re less likely to be enrolled in five or more honors or AP classes, according to the district documents.
AVID students are also more proficient in reading and math and make more growth in those subjects than non-AVID students, the documents state.
AVID students also are more likely to have three or more “very low grades,” Ds or Fs, the numbers show. Twenty-eight percent of AVID students have three or more low grades, compared to 21 percent of non-AVID students.
Membership to the program costs the district about $19,000 per year. Professional development, including staff training and travel to training sites, costs the district about $77,000 per year, according to district budget documents.
The community budget committee voted 9-6 at its last meeting to strike the AVID program from the budget and place the teachers elsewhere in the district.
“While there was acknowledgement that this program is beneficial for the 300+ students enrolled, the cost per student is high,” the budget proposal from the committee stated. “Nearly all of the Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School teachers have had AVID training and currently use the program in their classrooms. It was suggested in the committee that the main objectives of the program could be pursued under a different name as a district-wide effort.”
Yerkes said that she is grateful for the time the budget committee put into creating its proposal, and that every item cut was a tough call. However, she believes AVID should stay in schools. Parents can pull their children from the AVID program at any time if they don’t find it helpful, she said.
“The fact that we don’t have that happening is a testament to the program,” she said.
Budget committee members also argued the program is exclusionary, because, at the higher levels, not every student is eligible to take it.
Quinto said that AVID is just the same as AP classes and special education classes - not everyone is allowed to take those, either.
“Who is reaching the 80 percent? AVID,” he said. “I do have the high (achievers), I do have the low - for them, the expectation is all the same.”
Quinto said cutting the program would not only cause district achievement to suffer, it would lead to a lot of sad kids who love the program.
“The growth of these students is enormous,” Quinto said. “We’re not warming seats anymore, and it’s going to pay dividends later.”
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Information from: Juneau (Alaska) Empire, https://www.juneauempire.com
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