SAN DIEGO – The San Diego school district will open a hybrid high school in September in what would be the first in a string of nontraditional offerings designed to prevent students from dropping out while meeting growing demands for alternative education programs.
The San Diego Early/Middle College will be housed at San Diego City College, where students will enroll in both high school and college courses. By the time they graduate in four or five years, those students could be well on their way toward earning an associate's degree or transferring to a four-year university.
“This is really for students who don't want a traditional high school experience,” Principal Elizabeth Larkin said. “Part of the power of this program comes with the personalization students will get.”
Similar to the successful Met School, another middle college on the Mesa College campus, this early college will feature classes of no more than 18 students and no more than 38 students per grade level.
While students at the Met School – formally called San Diego Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical High School – spend two days a week working at professional internships, San Diego early-college students will stay on campus and focus on class-work. They will take mostly high school courses during their freshman and sophomore years, adding college courses in their final years.
The new school will serve two populations: incoming “early college” students who want a personalized experience and a fast track to college, and upperclassmen in the “middle college” who may be at risk of dropping out. Younger early-college students will attend mostly morning classes, while the middle-college students will attend mostly afternoon classes.
San Diego district Superintendent Terry Grier established similar programs while he was head of the Guilford County school district in North Carolina. He hinted shortly after he was hired to run the San Diego Unified School District in March that he planned to establish such programs here.
The early-college program will start with freshmen in September, adding grade levels each year until it reaches capacity. The district is still recruiting students for the middle-college program.
The San Diego school board approved the new school at its meeting Tuesday. Under the agreement with San Diego City College, the district will spend about $91,000 in state facilities funds to rent classroom space for the first two years. After that, the classroom space will be free to the district.
The program itself will be funded, in part, with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Maureen Magee: (619) 293-1369; maureen.magee@uniontrib.com
