Spike in failing grades prompts Petaluma City School District to join emergency summit

Petaluma City School District says 22% of its high school students have one or more failing grades this fall, a 7% increase from last year. For English language learners, the increase is dramatically higher.|

A broad cross-section of community leaders and educators are meeting for the second time this week as part of a nascent initiative designed to address a growing crisis brought by distance learning, following recent data that shows an alarmingly high number of failing grades within Petaluma’s largest school district.

In a recently-released report, Petaluma City School District says 22% of its more than high school students have one or more failing grades this fall. Compared to last year’s figures from the same time period, it marks a 7% increase – with hundreds more Petaluma kids in academic trouble under distance learning.

The academic crisis is most severe among Petaluma City School’s high school English learners, more than half of whom have received F grades this year. Fall 2020 data details a dramatic 31% increase in one or more failing marks for students in grade levels 9 through 12 who are learning English – predominately Latino students.

“When our board saw that data, they realized it was a time for all hands on deck,” said Jason Sutter, the district’s director of educational services. “We are doing everything we can, and looking at the data around how our students are struggling – we can’t do it alone, we need help.”

Petaluma City Schools Failing Grades for High School Students, Fall 2020.pdf

The district’s approximately 7,400 students span seven elementary schools, two junior high schools, two high schools, one continuation school, two charter and two alternative high schools. While not the city’s only school district, it is among the largest in Sonoma County.

Sutter said while the current data looks only at high school students, that’s not to mean that “everything is hunky dory” at the junior high level, rather that the district is focusing on the upper grades at the moment where the “stakes are higher.”

The alarming data prompted the first Distance Learning Summit meeting this month, in which more than three dozen participants representing a dozen local nonprofits, advocacy groups, educators and public health professionals met to brainstorm solutions to what several referred to as an “emergency.”

Partners include the Petaluma Health Care District, Petaluma People Services Center, Mentor Me, Petaluma group TIDE (Team for Inclusivity, Diversity and Equity) and district officials.

“This crisis has been fully recognized now. We’re a year into it,” said TIDE co-founder Sarah Seitchik. “It’s why this group was created, to respond to COVID and wrap around to support the schools in areas they are unable to address. There is no way that a district can really address all of the issues that are falling on their feet now.”

But the surge in Fs is just one part in what district officials and education advocates are calling a two-pronged crisis, firmly linked to deepening social and emotional distress.

In a national YouthTruth survey published in October, more than 70% of the roughly 4,500 Sonoma County high schoolers surveyed said that feelings of deep anxiety about their future was the main obstacle in at-home learning. Another 58% said distractions at home caused significant problems and affected their success.

“We knew from the get-go that this was going to tax our students a lot, but what was shocking to us was that our county in particular showed students had social and emotional distress that was up to 21% higher than other counties across the state,” Sutter said.

Local educators have mused for years about the depth of distress caused by years of successive disasters. From floods to fires to power shutoffs and dangerous air conditions, the pandemic has joined a growing list of disruptions so common that past years’ events seem to blur into indiscernible dates.

In Petaluma, fire season often means school closures as toxic air hangs over the valley and power shut-offs debilitate operations.

“It must feel like disaster is always looming for them,” Sutter said, who himself has school-aged children. “For our kids that are seniors this year, they’ve had some major issue each year.”

Objectives for the initiative center on three main priorities: helping English language learners, bolstering mentoring and other support services for students and creating expanded social activities to help all students feel more connected to peers and teachers.

Yensi Jacob, director of Petaluma People Services Center’s Mentor Me program, is ready to help. The program currently serves about 250 local kids who are paired with adult mentors who commit to sticking around for at least two years. She said the jump in failing grades are the result of a core issue — that students and young people feel disconnected. Once that issue is addressed, she said, attempts to reach out to kids who are struggling academically will be easier.

“I think it’s overwhelming to fall behind, and it’s scary to try to catch up, especially when you’re distance learning,” she said. “There are all these layers, and it’s all under this blanket of uncertainty about what the next semester will look like.”

For Seitchik, the pandemic is laying bare a fundamental inequity among students, prompting community groups to come together in an unprecedented way and bridge the wide academic achievement gap apparent among English language learners and Latino students.

But it also presents an opportunity, she said, in building layers of support that might sustain students into the future.

“This doesn’t just have to be about a pandemic, this can move forward to create a web of support and that can surround and scaffold our community,” Seitchik said. “If we can continue to work together, I think there’s a lot we can do to better address the needs of our kids.”

(Contact Kathryn Palmer at kathryn.palmer@arguscourier.com, on Twitter @KathrynPlmr.)

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