Alvin Elementary School in the Santa Maria-Bonita School District, was one of nine schools in the county and 722 in the state to recently receive a California Gold Ribbon School Award. Alvin earned the award for its distinctive College Starts Here program, which encourages students as early as kindergarten to start thinking about choosing a college and career.
The school promotes college attendance to students at all grade levels. Each classroom “adopts” a college and the students research it and often talk about what they learned, including singing their college’s fight song. Staff members wear college shirts once a week and students are encouraged to as well. The walls of the school are covered with banners, murals, and bulletin boards highlighting specific colleges and careers. The annual career day focuses on professional jobs and all the speakers discuss their educational background. Alvin School uses a web-based career center program that allows students to explore careers they are interested in and determine the training or education necessary for those careers. Even in the schoolwide reading program, the classes can earn “degrees,” from an associate degree to a Ph.D, depending on the students’ combined reading scores.
“We try to make everything related to college, including behavior and expectations,” Principal Ann McDaniel said in a press release. The school’s motto is, “Your choices + Your actions = Your future. Choose your future!”
In third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, Alvin students take college field trips to Allan Hancock College; Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo; UCSB; and USC. “By the time they leave Alvin, the students have visited a community college, a CSU, a UC, and a private university in an urban setting,” McDaniel said.
Approximately 75 percent of the parents of Alvin’s 1,034 students did not graduate from high school, and only 1 percent have a college degree. Citywide, only 10 percent of residents 25 and older have a college degree. Nationwide, 25 percent of the same age group have college degrees.
“We start very early making sure that students know they have to do well at each grade level and build on their success,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel says the next phase of the school’s College Starts Here: On The Path to College and Career program is to track the progress of former Alvin School students as they graduate high school and advance to higher education.
This article appears in May 5-12, 2016.