It's crunch time for Sac City's 'e21' school program

Five years after the Sacramento City Unified School District dismissed the old notion of what a high school should look like – abandoning tradition for career education and emphasizing intimacy over size – students are showing signs of success.

They are graduating in greater numbers, taking more advanced classes and completing more college admissions requirements. Their test scores are up and, perhaps above all else, many report that they feel engaged, challenged and valued for the first time.

But the longevity of that success could be in peril if more students don't buy in to the small school philosophy, and the district doesn't find more money to sustain the revolutionary but expensive effort.

The two challenges are outlined in a report released today assessing the first five years of progress of the Sacramento City Unified movement called "Education for the 21st Century," or "e21."

The effort involves two major components to keeping kids engaged in high school: Breaking up the district's large, impersonal high schools into career-oriented tracks, and building themed high schools intended to house no more than 500 students apiece.

The plan was bankrolled by $12 million in grants from the Carnegie Corp. of New York and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – the last of which will expire next year.

The plan advocates rigor in academics, relevance in the curriculum and relationships between students and the adults responsible for their education. The report – crafted by the district and its partner, Linking Education and Economic Development – documents how those tenets have improved the high school experience in Sacramento.

"E21 truly is a model and has application for other school districts in the region and certainly around the nation," said Dave Butler, executive director of LEED.

"A lot of reform is in the petri dish form. This is a complete transformation of an urban school district's high school system."

Years in the making, e21 is a blueprint for high school education reform born of a vision first espoused and promoted by the late Mayor Joe Serna Jr. From schools to churches, community members laid out their desires for a secondary system that would prevent struggling students from slipping through the cracks and prepare all students for whatever next step – college or career – they chose.

Tangible change appeared in 2003, when high schools began their transformation. Today, students can choose from among six small high schools and five comprehensive high schools, each with at least four career tracks. A seventh small high school will open this fall.

Results thus far provide evidence of the effort's promise. The number of students taking college-level courses such as Advancement Placement rose nearly 50 percent. And in 2005-06, the rate at which Sacramento City Unified's students were graduating was 87 percent, up from 76 percent before e21 was implemented, according to state data.

Associate Superintendent Mary Shelton said the results already are garnering the district national acclaim.

"People call Sac City (Unified) all the time to see the kinds of things we're doing," she said.

Freshman April Nelson II knew she wanted to be an architectural engineer, so the School of Engineering and Sciences seemed a natural fit. The size appealed to her, too. There are 180 students on campus this year, and the school will only grow to 500.

"It's better for me because you can work more closely with your teachers," said Nelson, a 14-year-old from the Pocket area. "You can get better grades that way."

Kris Beyer, 15, who hopes to be an auto mechanic, feels the smaller environment discourages him from getting in trouble. There are fewer temptations, he said, fewer bad influences like the ones that got him "caught up" in middle school.

Students at Genesis High School – another of the six small high schools – spoke candidly about their own troubled pasts, and the opportunity their school has given them to reform. The school partners with the National Guard's California Cadet Corps, offering structure and discipline.

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