Designing Design Tech into Mills

Today's Daily Journal article on where a new charter school will be located was very timely.  I had just finished reading a Wall Street Journal article about the New York State governor and legislature's deal to smack down the new NYC mayor who is anti-charter school.  New York State passed a law requiring NYC to find rent-free space for charter schools in government buildings--with a stick that if no room can be found "the city would be required to pay up to $40 million for the charter to rent private space."  The piece mentioned that California has a very similar law except California school districts can charge charter schools rent.  The DJ article notes

A new charter school focused on hands-on projects and design concepts could soon be occupying space at Mills High School starting this fall.

Although Design Tech High School’s leadership wanted it to be housed at Burlingame High School, the San Mateo Union High School District said there isn’t space at the growing Burlingame school. Last week, the district approved sending a letter to the charter offering six classrooms, each with 960 square feet of space, at the Mills location for the new school. The school initially requested at least eight classrooms and the district previously had offered five.

You can click through for the financial details, but the Mills vs. BHS location negotiation boils down to this

“Burlingame is a built-out site,” said Liz McManus, deputy superintendent of business services. “There’s a bubble going through the Burlingame Elementary School District. We have to look at our long-term projections with our capacity. In the 2014-15 school year it will flow into our schools and continue to grow for the next 15 years. We don’t anticipate the growth pattern to be as strong at Mills and it’s a beautiful campus.”

It sounds like the SMUHSD is being much more reasonable than the new major in New York City--not that it's hard to pass that hurdle.  I've also been thinking about the "bubble" Liz identifies.  It may be more like a giant, hot air balloon if this, this, this and this all progress the way these project could go.

Comments

[HMB]

Has enrollment gone up that much at Cap and down that much at Mills since my kids were in school? It's been a few years, but Cap used to have plenty of room to increase enrollment and Mills was full to bursting. Or is the district hoping that bringing in a charter program at Mills will increase diversity at that campus, similar to how the district sought to stem the loss of students from Cap and to draw students from throughout the district with the IB program?

[Stan]

SMUHSD has decided to allow D.Tech Charter School to co-locate on Mills High School campus.
By attending this meeting, you will make it clear that the Mills HS community WILL NOT allow the District to overlook us or exclude us from decision-making about our collective future.

Thursday, May 8th – 7:00 p.m.
San Mateo Adult School
789 East Poplar
San Mateo, CA 94401

[Bruce Dickinson]

Listen Stan, you gotta be a little more specific. What is the beef? Would be good to know to galvanize people to attend.

[dtech student]

dtech sucks i know because i go there the teachers dont teach and the staff is a little bit crappy

[Sarah Cheyette]

Dtech is great. Have to counter the negative above, which may or may not be from a dtech student.

[KRN]

Dtech students spent the week at Oracle learning to code. How many school in the SMUHSD teach coding? DTech is meeting a need that is not being met in the current public school system.

[hillsider]

I have often wondered about that question. How many SMUHSD schools teach coding? Or is it even in the course work at BIS for that matter?

[KRN]

Mark Zuckerberg spoke at Sequoia High School and told the students he would hire them with their coding skills. Only three schools offer AP Computer Science, but nothing to introduce coding to the lower high school grades or middle school students. Women are therefore further locked out of the talents essential in our economy. There are no plans in place to connect or expand Computer Science. Students are either self taught or are left out of the coding revolution. Girls Who Code does provide training for young women, but it is done outside of the school day. The private schools are starting coding in the elementary grades with students becoming proficient by grade 8.