The lone California Distinguished School in the Sulphur Springs Union School District is set to be recognized tomorrow for its recent award from the California Department of Education.
Members of the district’s Governing Board are expected to highlight Valley View Community School on Wednesday for its outstanding student performance with a high poverty rate, an achievement that earned the school the title of a California Distinguished School.
“Obviously, the district is very proud of the school and Principal Rick Drew for accomplishing this,” Board President Ken Chase said. “It’s a great recognition.”
At a meeting of the governing board held at the school in April, Principal Rick Drew discussed the importance of the honor to a school like Valley View, which has 35 percent of its student population classified as English Learners.
Drew shared that Valley View is only one of four California Distinguished Schools in the entire SCV before he presented certificates of recognition to the teachers in attendance and thanked everybody who made the award possible.
The California Distinguished Schools program annually recognizes elementary schools that have made exceptional gains in implementing academic content and performance standards adopted by the State Board of Education. Schools are determined eligible for the honor based on their performance and progress on state indicators, like test scores, suspension rates and English learner progress, on the California School Dashboard, the state’s accountability system.
Valley View has 66 percent of its student population on the free or reduced lunch program, meaning the school qualified for the category of outstanding student performance with a high poverty rate, according to Ed Data.
Poverty often serves as a barrier to student success. “(Valley View) is a Title I school, so there’s economically disadvantaged students,” Chase said, “but despite that, they were still able to make everyone proud by succeeding on their tests.”
