Lincoln High School Reflection Paper

I work in a school district and I believe that a school is the heart of the community. It is where we meet our neighbors, where our children make friends and families gather for school activities. It is about people. When you have a neighborhood that is struggling, you will also find the school is struggling. As I watched the video Building Expectations, Portrait of Lincoln High School there was definitely signs that this community was careworn. Possibly part of the decision to rebuild the high school was in hopes of raising the community to a better level than it was. (Gao) In doing so, I think they learned that a building does not fix a problem, people do. Before 2007, Lincoln High School had an enrollment of only 300 students. The decision made by the City of San Diego to fund $129 million toward rebuilding the high school forced them to move students around to other high schools in the district until it was complete. They were not sure if the students would return once it was complete. When it opened, it had over 2000 students enrolled. The students were coming from 56 different middle schools around the district. The building could handle approximately 2700 students. (Megan Burke, 2011) The goals were to have 85% of the first graduating class in 2011 college ready. The priorities were test scores, attendance and discipline issues. From what I determined, they did not have any alternatives. Future funding from the district played a role and made it essential that the goals were met. This is where I think the city and the school administrators were not clear about the gap between the current state and the goal. (Wang) They knew from data that the previous school had one of the lowest attendance rates in the district. They also knew that more than 80% of the students were eligible for the free and reduced lunch program, which told them the income levels were low. (Megan Burke, 2011) They obviously felt that all these students needed were the resources that the building provided to be successful students. However, that turned out to be not the case at all. The students that did not attend school had other issues at home that they were dealing with. A teacher and administrative assistant did visits to each of 100 students that were on the list of low attendance from Lincoln …show more content…
Even so, you could see and hear the frustration that he had when the school board or district would come to him and tell him that he needed to improve on this and be at this level. They obviously were not giving him the chance to explain or try to understand his struggles. Although they were not in line to meet the long-term goal, there was still short term goals that were being met one student at a time. That was obvious in the story of the student that they gave a second chance, graduated with a 4.0 and was going to college. (Faryon, 2011) If the principal and the teacher had not stopped to see the potential this student had, he would not have been successful. Since all the students enrolled were coming from 56 different middle schools, the invaluable information that high school teachers get from middle school teachers was not there. This is something that failed identification in the