Sausalito Marin City Schools Get New Leader
Troubled Marin City Sausalito schools get new leader
Debra Bradley, a former superintendent of the 11,000-student Lompoc Unified School District in Santa Barbara County, will begin work April 17 with a predominantly black enrollment of 350 students. Her annual salary will be $142,500. Bradley's predecessor, Rose Marie Roberson, was placed on paid administrative leave last August, as part of the trustees' desire to bring in new administrators to improve academic achievement. The goal, as expressed repeatedly by board president George Stratigos and echoed by others, is to make Sausalito Marin City the "best district in the country" and in so doing lure Sausalito's white students back to the district. White parents for years have sent their children to private schools. High test scores, Stratigos and others believe, will bring them back. For the past two years Bradley has been an academic trouble-shooter for the state Department of Education, working mostly at the Los Angeles Unified School District in black and Latino low-achieving schools. She said she had been successful in raising test scores at several Los Angeles schools but was unable to immediately provide an example. Trustees have adopted the slogan "Vision 900," which stands for a high-water Academic Performance Index test score mark achieved by a handful of districts in the state. The top API score is 1,000. The highest-scoring districts in Marin score in the low- to mid-800s, making them among the highest scoring in the state. Sausalito Marin City's three schools - Bayside, Willow Creek Academy and Martin Luther King Jr. Academy middle school - last year had a combined API of 692. "Debra Bradley will provide a steady and experienced hand moving us toward our long-stated goal of Vision 900," said Stratigos in a written statement. "She has proven throughout her career in education that academic success is the most critical aspect of school performance. "Our board is determined to see our district's students meet or exceed the highest levels of academic achievement in Marin, and we believe that Ms. Bradley is well-qualified in leading that effort." Bradley said that she will focus on bringing the district's curriculum
Bradley was at Lompoc from 1986 to 2003, rising from teacher to school administrator to superintendent from 1996 to 2003. Bradley, who will replace interim superintendent Mary Buttler, said the most important element of improving learning is teachers. To that end, she said, she will be talking to district teachers and finding out what professional development in pedagogical approaches they have taken part in, as well as new programs that might be available to improve instruction. Parental participation also is important, she said. Bradley said she will reach out to parents, scheduling conferences and meetings at times convenient to them. The help that parents can provide to their children in terms of homework or simply talking about school is considered by most educators as fundamental to academic achievement. Lompoc Trustee Sue Schuyler said Bradley "did a great job, she did a lot of innovative things to bring up test scores." Lompoc's enrollment is 62 percent Hispanic, and before Bradley's tenure at the district's top post, had been registering low scores. Schuyler could not recall how high or from what mark to another the scores had risen. Schuyler said Bradley "backed down" the state-mandated curriculum from the 12th grade to the first, to make sure all grades were learning what was required for good test scores. "The school district that found her could not have done better," Schuyler said. "She did a great job and I was sad to see her go." Kenneth D. Ostini, another Lompoc trustee, called Bradley "very strong and very sure of herself." Contact Don Speich via e-mail at dspeich@marinij.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
posted by 94965 @ 4/14/2006 11:36:00 PM
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