Precious Blood had begun combining grade levels as a cost-saving measure several years earlier. The Microschools Network has shown that to be good for education as well as finances.
“Sometimes people look at multiage classrooms as a panic measure because you’re struggling financially. That’s not the case for us,” said Maria Cunanan, the principal at Precious Blood for 11 years. “A multiage classroom is the way to go. We believe that they prepare the students for life. Anything that they do after they leave here, they will be involved with people of all ages.”
Precious Blood has come full circle since the 1950s, when it educated first-generation European immigrants and had multiage classes because there were only four teaching sisters. Today its families hail from the Philippines, East Asia, and Latin America — heritages that they proudly celebrated with artistic displays of music and dance at the school’s recent International Day.
Cunanan is thrilled that the network allows specialized teachers of music and art.
“Those are usually the first things to go with schools that are financially challenged,” she said. “This has opened up resources for us that we would never have been able to have.”
A ranger from EnrichLA teaches organic gardening, with tasty and colorful results. The students have held farmers markets for their parents, giving away herbs, lettuce, zucchini, and kale.
“The plants are so healthy looking,” said Guillermo, whose daughters are in sixth and eighth grades.
Her girls have benefitted from a new approach to homework, which emphasizes preparing for the next day’s lesson rather than reviewing the last lesson.
“From the results I’ve seen with both my daughters, the test scores have shown it to be very, very effective,” she said.
That is also the experience of Corman Gregorio, whose eighth-grade son Gavin has attended Precious Blood since transitional kindergarten. She has seen a marked improvement in his study habits.
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“Now he is much more focused,” she said.
He is among the first Precious Blood students invited to enroll in an online program for high school math credit through Arizona State University. There is no extra charge to the parents.
All of this is creating buzz.
The number of parents who signed up at an enrollment pitch for Precious Blood soared from 25% to 75%, with 100% of last year’s families returning. Standardized test scores are also up, Arellano said.
Prior to the Microschools Network, “I always thought of Precious Blood as ‘The Little Engine That Could,’” Guillermo said.
“There’s a whole new energy that it has brought to the school, as far as the academics and being proud of being a smaller-size school. When my son graduated in 2018, I never in my wildest dreams thought that things like this would be possible at Precious Blood.”
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