Evergreen students have high school options

Parents of graduating eighth graders at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, are facing some confusion when it comes to enrolling their child as a freshman at nearby West Valley High School.

According to parents at Evergreen, the Tehama County Office of Education has warned them that while the board will not deny their inter-district transfer requests to West Valley, they will be competing with Anderson families for placement.

“We are not full,” West Valley Principal Emmett Koerperich said, discounting the warning.

According to Koerperich, he said the Tehama education office is using a tactic to scare parents into sending their kids to Red Bluff High School.

“West Valley and Anderson both have lots of room for kids who want to attend our schools… We’ve (West Valley) been as big as 1,200 (students) and were at 950 this year and expect to be around 950 next year,” explained Koerperich.

There were rumors circling the Evergreen Middle School campus that the Red Bluff Union School District was denying inter-district transfers to students who want to attend West Valley; however those rumors appear to be unfounded.

“We are not denying inter-district transfers for Evergreen students to attend West Valley,” said Red Bluff Principal Patrick Gleason.

Because Red Bluff High School is in year three of Program Improvement under No Child Left Behind, parent’s have the option to send their children to a school that isn’t in program improvement.

For Cottonwood parents in Tehama County that means Los Molinos or West Valley high schools.

Under No Child Left Behind, there are four criteria for making Adequate Yearly Progress, a federal standard that schools must meet each year.

Annual Measurable Objective, meaning every subgroup meets its target;

Participation rate, 95 percent of the student population needs to be tested;

Academic Performance Index, meeting the yearly targeted growth set by the state;

and Graduation Rate, graduating a certain number of students, a standard that mostly applies to high schools.

For 2011 the Annual Measurable Objectives for English – Language Arts and math were 66 percent proficient or above.

Red Bluff High failed to meet the objectives in three of four subgroups for each subject.