The Cupertino Courier Homestead copes with loss of BASRC funding By Michelle Ku Homestead High School's reform plans suffered a setback on Jan. 21 when the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC) withdrew funding for the school. In the third year of a five-year grant cycle, Homestead lost $200,000 in funds from the Hewlett-Annenberg Challenge as well as its status as a "leadership school." The Hewlett-Annenberg Challenge, administered by BASRC funds a five-year school reform cycle. "It wasn't money that was going to go on forever anyway," said Maribeth Smith, district associate superintendent. "Part of the start-up money is to get started and you find a way to maintain and sustain the effort. It's just that Homestead got to do this a little sooner than they planned." Homestead was already in the middle of its reform process when it was chosen to receive the leadership grant in the spring of 1996. The school had implemented a "house" system in which freshman and sophomores were grouped together and subjects were integrated and taught together, for example, American history and American literature. "As BASRC began to fund a reform in progress, the consensus among the staff sort of unraveled and they had to take some time out to rebuild the consensus," Smith said. BASRC's decision to withdraw the grant did not come as a surprise, said Homestead principal Eric Paulson. Last spring, a BASRC review team put Homestead on funding hiatus because the school did not have a consensus to take the reform schoolwide. Rather than reaching a consensus to expand the reform to the entire school, Homestead's staff chose to refocus their reform plans toward helping struggling students, students whose grade-point averages were lower than 2.0. The decision to begin a new reform process altered the timeline of the grant. "They came back at the end of the six months and asked if they could have an extension on the regrouping period," said Merrill Vargo, executive director of BASRC. "While they may very well have needed another six months, we didn't see they could catch up with what would essentially have been a year off. We didn't see they could catch up and get back on the timeline we were on. By choosing a new direction, Homestead was where schools in the first year of funding usually begin, but in this case, the school was entering its third year of funding. "The grant is really time-driven," Smith said. "We hoped to avoid [loss of the grant] because we feel the school is back on target, but they weren't able to meet the goals on the timeline." Withdrawal of BASRC support does not signal the end of reform efforts at Homestead. Instead, the loss of the funds will affect the school in the form of staff development opportunities. "Part of the money was used for a summer institute for teachers to provide time for them to work on curriculum," Paulson said. "Money was also used for teachers to attend conferences and workshops throughout the year in addition to some task-force work." To offset the loss of the grant, Homestead will look into other grant opportunities, Paulson said. One for which Homestead is applying is the Digital High School grant. In the meantime, the school plans to continue with its reform work. Although Homestead does not now have plans to take its "house" program schoolwide, it will be implemented across the school if there's a demand for it, Paulson said. [ Back to Contents Page | Cupertino Courier Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Cupertino Courier, February 3, 1999. ©1999 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.