 |
|
|
|
|
Sunnyvale School District earns award
By Jana Seshadri
The Sunnyvale School District won the Golden Bell Award this year for its innovative programs on strategic planning, curriculum audit and curriculum-driven budgeting under the direction of Superintendent Dr. Joseph Rudnicki and Deputy Superintendent of Business Services Benjamin Picard.
For the last 21 years, the California School Boards Association has annually honored 40 to 60 outstanding programs in school districts and county offices of education throughout California with the Golden Bell Award.
"We've developed an excellent program by putting together critical elements," Rudnicki said.
According to Rudnicki, a combination of three major programs works to propel the district forward toward meeting its goals. However, he said its current success came from a gradual process. For the past six years, the district's strategic planning has been a key component and this year's new and improved plan incorporated results from a curriculum audit process which took place two years ago.
According to Picard, audit processes always focus on what improvements can be made, never on what is being done right.
"Results of the audit revealed that we needed to do a better job of allocating funds and resources to support our mission and purpose," Picard said.
The board made extensive recommendations to bring about the highest standard of district functioning. They looked into how the district develops its budget and how resources are allocated. Rudnicki said one of the district's goals was to bring students up to par with their grade-level performance. Technology played an important part on the district's list; the goal was to have one computer for every four students, district-wide, Rudnicki said.
In order to comply with the audit results, a new curriculum-driven budgeting process was developed. It eliminated the low-functioning programs, reduced the over-funded ones and focused on high-achieving programs within the school district.
"We defined 25 discrete programs for budgeting," Picard said.
Each program manager made a presentation to a team of 34 people consisting of schoolteachers, parents and other members of the community and district personnel to determine which programs will be funded for each grade level, he said. The team then made recommendations to the school board, and once the programs were decided upon, budget prioritization took place, Picard said.
According to the state school board, the integration of the three processes represents a significant and exemplary approach to the development and evaluation of curriculum.
In order to be considered for the Golden Bell Award, the school district should submit an application to the state school board and a selection committee reviews each application before judging it.
"The programs have to be innovative and exemplary and are judged for sustainability, replicability, commitment to all students' needs and had to have made a demonstrated difference for students," said Holly Jacobson, assistant executive director of the state school board.
Jacobson said she hopes successful programs like the one implemented by the Sunnyvale district would inspire and motivate other school districts statewide.
The Golden Bell, a physical award, was presented to Linda Kilian, the Sunnyvale school board president, along with the other board members and Rudnicki at a special ceremony at the Marriott Hotel in San Diego Dec 1.
|
|
|
|
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
