Devaki Narayan
According to greatschools.org, San Marin has an overall rating of 10/10 for college readiness, which is far above the state average, however, only 54% of low-income students are college ready at graduation, while 83% of all other students are college ready at graduation. Most schools in Marin have similar ratings. The community agrees that action should be taken to bridge this gap and are curious about what the school is doing to make more changes.
San Marin High School provides classes that prepare students for college readiness and success. The College and Career readiness course and AVID help set students up for college, as well as the STEM programs and 16 AP courses that can provide college credit.
“The school definitely encourages us to prepare ourselves,” junior STEM and multi-AP student Noela de Frenza said. “I feel like once I do go to college, I definitely will be ready.”
Despite some students expressing that they feel prepared, others have a harder time preparing themselves for college.
“Equity has everything to do with making sure our school environment feels comfortable and safe for all students, it also really ensures that all students have the support and access to be successful,” Principal Jennifer Larson said.
San Marin provides tools to help students outside of class such as Learning Lounge and Tutorial, with additional plans to improve the equity problems.
Equity issues are not exclusive to college readiness. Another part where equity often is an issue is in punishment based approaches. The Teacher Equity Team has decided to focus on bringing back restorative practices.
“One of the things we know helps equity a lot is not just having punitive consequences for both academic and behavior,” Larson said. “But really there has to be learning in order for people to make changes.”
The Teacher Equity Team will do this by bringing together a group of students and adults who will be trained on how to run restorative practices. Additionally, teachers started having interventions in class during tutorials based on collected data. These interventions focus on students’ specific needs, such as fundamentals of math, writing strategies, and time management, rather than just having students do work they can’t do unless they understand the material.
“We will start looking at where there are some areas where our students are really struggling and then create interventions just for that where the students will then get extra help rather than just working on catch up work,” Larson said.
