Incoming K's Orientation at Hillcrest Wed Night
Karin Foust
December 10th at 7 pm.
I sincerely regret the lack of notice. It was a horrible mistake on
our part. I am so very sorry.
If you are thinking of sending your child to kindergarten next year,
you can meet the teachers tomorrow night and find out about the
curriculum.
Starting tomorrow through January 15th, they are also accepting
applications for kindergarten, and yes, even though you already have
kid(s) at the school, you must fill out an Options form. There is more
information on the Hillcrest site
<http://www.hillcrestpta.org/news/admissions/index.shtml> ) and on the
OUSD site as well. Applications are also available in the Hillcrest
office.
If you can't make it tomorrow night, PLEASE make sure you turn in your
application by January 15th. If you have questions and can't attend,
please call the office and we will help you.
Mike Ambrose
I went to Hillcrest's kindergarten orientation last night and am glad I did. There were probably 20 to 30 parents there. The Principal, Beverley, was there as well as the two kindergarten teachers. Beverley went over the Options process and talked about Hillcrest as well as Kaiser and Chabot. She regular meets with the principals at Kaiser and Chabot. She believes they are up and coming schools that are at the same place Hillcrest was a few years ago.
The teachers went over the curriculum, their teaching materials, a typical day, and gave some tips to tell if your child is ready for school. Beverly said Hillcrest teaches the exact same curriculum and uses the same evaluation standards as every other school in OUSD.
Kindergarten is much different than when I went to school many, many years ago. The teachers called Kindergarten today the new first grade. Kids actually have homework starting in Kindergarten. Kindergarten was all about socialization when I attended. Now, they focus on basic math, writing skills, language, and social skills.
Mike
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2008 23:19:49 -0800
From: thef...@gmail.com
To: fn...@yahoogroups.com; hillcres...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Incoming K's Orientation at Hillcrest Wed Night
Rhonda Woo
I also attended the Open House at Hillcrest. I would have estimated 40+ families were present (Families were coming in between 7 and 8 p.m. By the time I left, at 8, 20 families had signed in. However, families that arrived after 7 p.m. didn’t seem to be signing in b/c the meeting was already in progress. Some of the families in attendance already had siblings currently at Hillcrest.) As a result, the sheer number of families in attendance in what I believe to be a poorly advertised event is a bit concerning. Specifically, my neighbor who is raising her grandson wasn’t there and it calls into question how many other families with children expected to apply at Hillcrest for 2009 were not there and would have attended if the meeting were well publicized. Beverley specifically stated that she still did not know how many current K families have siblings expected to attend for 2009.
My recollection was that within the first 5 minutes of the meeting, one of the first things that Beverley said was that Kaiser is a wonderful school. She then provided contact info regarding Kaiser and advised that the next Kaiser Open House would be on January 7, 2009. The discussion of Chabot being a good school came up much later in the meeting. When Beverley said that Kaiser is at the same place Hillcrest was a few years ago, my recollection was that she said the following: Kaiser is where Hillcrest was when Beverley first started at Hillcrest, which was 9 years ago. Additionally, Beverley advised that on December 17, the Board of Education was expected to vote on whether Hillcrest overflow would be sent to Kaiser as a “block” so that the Hillcrest overflow would be moved as a group. Either Beverly or one of the teachers advised that it might be better to wait until after December 17 to fill out the Options form. No family raised the question of why overflow Hillcrest families would not have 3rd priority at the second choice school and thereafter choices as every other redirected Oakland family, perhaps because the families were not aware of the exact details of the current policy.
The K teachers at Hillcrest seemed to enjoy their work, which is a good thing. They both had good things to say about Adventure Time, which is the service used to provide before school and after school care. They both said that they liked the full day schedule because it gave them more time to prepare. The K teachers participate in monthly meetings with other OUSD K teachers to share ideas on how to teach better/differently. Beverly mentioned that she met often with principals of other schools, including Kaiser, Montclair, and Thornhill. My recollection was that she said she knew the Chabot principal but I didn’t recall that she met with him on a regular basis. (As an aside, I attended the Chabot tour earlier that morning. The principal seemed very nice, energetic, and committed to Chabot. There are 80 openings at Chabot for K and he seemed fairly confident that all neighborhood children who applied would be accepted. He encouraged families outside the neighborhood to apply at additional schools just in case. He encouraged a family in Berkeley to go down to the admissions office to make their case as to why the family should be admitted to Chabot versus Perkins, which is the family’s neighborhood school in Berkeley. Apparently, the family is really close to the Oakland/Berkeley border but is on the Berkeley side.)
The K teachers, as well as Beverley, seemed to support the notion of waiting a year if the parent did not believe a child was ready for K, despite the fact that the child might be 5 on September 1. The K teachers strongly advised the families to listen to the preschool teachers in this regard.
Only a select few parents asked questions. Some were parents of current Hillcrest siblings (the impression that I had was that perhaps the siblings are at the MS level and things have changed since the siblings were in K), one seemed to have some knowledge that things were currently in the works within the OUSD, and some who appeared completely new to all the happenings. I asked no questions for various reasons, including, that the questions I had no one would be able to answer and the sense that my chances of getting my son admitted in 2009 appeared quite remote that asking a question about what his typical day at Hillcrest would be seemed to be a waste of time. In hindsight, it might have been nice to have the principals from other schools that my son more likely would attend, if we stayed in the OUSD, present. But of course, that would never happened under any imaginable situation.
Bottomline: My sense was that the number of applications for 2009 is still up in the air but that the best estimate is that the 2009 applications might be a record high.
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Rhonda Woo
Katy Murphy is a writer with The Montclarion who has written a lot about the OUSD and overcrowding in the Oakland Hills. She apparently attends most if not all of these meetings. She has a blog in this regard in the event that you would like to provide any observations or thoughts that you might have. A link to her last blog is as follows:
http://www.ibabuzz.com/education/2008/11/21/the-latest-school-crowding-fix/