My son Jacob switched last year from the Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) to the Tustin Unified School District, when he was accepted into the Tustin Columbus Magnet School. He had completed his elementary education at one of Santa Ana’s last fundamental schools, the award-winning John Muir Fundamental Elementary.
A few years ago the PTA at Muir Fundamental used to sponsor their annual Science Camp. Well their PTA became a hot mess over the last few years as selfish parents wasted money on one stupid idea after another, such as paying a DJ to be at their school fair – and losing money on that event instead of making money. Today Muir Fundamental no longer sponsors an annual Science Camp.
That is also the case at Santiago Elementary – which is now a K-8 school. They too once sponsored an annual Science Camp, but that is no longer the case.
The SAUSD’s PTA organizations must be a disaster for this to happen. And you have to wonder if the SAUSD itself sees no value in science curriculum.
The school my son attends has a focus on STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education. No matter what he does in life I know that this foundation will serve him well.
It is sad that kids have to flee the SAUSD today in order to get a good education. In fact most of the SAUSD teachers I know who live in Santa Ana send their own kids either to private schools or to charter schools. Surely they must know what they’re doing, right?
You have to wonder what the effect of having the brightest kids leave our local school district, year after year, has been on the rest of the student body? This brain drain has been going on for many years. It cannot bode well for the SAUSD, which spends a lot of money on promotional videos and even a promotional fair in DTSA this year.
Unfortunately this is happening but not just in SAUSD. The PTAs and PFOs try, and yes although there are a lot of selfish parents, they are the parents who are THERE. I am part of a PFO and fortunately we have a good set of say 12 parents, for a school of 1200!!! When more parents start to get involved, that’s when things will change, we get complaints because of how long it takes us to distribute things or get news out, but until there’s more parent help/involvement things will continue the same.
I just moved to OC and boy have I discovered the disaster of Sausd. is there a parent group to help? how can I PM you?
Santa Ana Charter schools are a mess too. The difference is that the charter school’s board meetings are not televised and most of the times parents are not aware of the charter board meetings.