In the spring of last year, the Pleasant Valley Union High School District came up with the glorious idea of readjusting the WASC schedule so that all five schools (seven, if you count the continuation school [read: the Siberian work camp for repeat offenders] and the adult education department) would do their WASCs simultaneously. While this did not adversely affect Chumash, since we were up for accreditation already, it upset some of the other campuses (Bard, for example, had earned a six-year accreditation only three years ago, but now they found themselves a-WASCing again).
Why the district decided to do this is still uncertain. Some say that it wanted to get such a hellish undertaking over all at once (the only problem being that, most likely, not all of the campuses would receive the same accreditation, so the district will be staggered again within three years). Others, more cynical, claim this is yet another way in which the district wants to compare the sites. This is particularly disturbing for the campuses on the south end of town, Chumash and Mission Oaks, pulling as they do from lower socio-economic populations than the northern campuses (Pleasant Valley and the more affluent and anglo Academy High). Some teachers on the C.H.S. campus already suffer from the "ugly step-sister" complex and this doesn’t seem to let them rest any easier. The more paranoid of the cynics see this as a personalized slam at our campus’ attempt at reform (the district being evil and wanting to do in our block-schedule program at any cost). The real rationale is probably not so conniving. My take has always been that to be conniving, one must be smart, and our d.o. (district office) quite frankly is just not that smart.
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