Notebook for 1/22/11

I read our story in the news section of the Citizen which discussed the possibility that the Board of Trustees of Elk Grove Unified will postpone the re-drawing of attendance boundaries. The reason, as I have previously blogged, is that Franklin High School and its feeder junior high, Toby Johnson, are over capacity. The Board wants to spread out the students between all of its schools. That's a good idea. With the exception of Pleasant Grove H.S. and Albiani Middle School, all the others are under capacity, some by quite a bit.

But the parents are beefing about that. As one administrator recalled in 2002 when Franklin High School was ready to open no one wanted to go there. Now, everyone wants to attend Franklin.

Laguna Creek is getting a bad rap and folks think it's like walking into East L.A. (yes, I had a parent tell me that).

So, the school board is taking the easy way out and putting it all off. But, because no one complained in the Irene West Elementary School area, those students will head to Laguna Creek/Harriet Eddy instead of Monterey Trail/Harris. Except for football, we almost never hear from Monterey Trail parents at the Citizen.

Well, go ahead and draw the boundaries. It still won't stop the parents of athletes figuring out a way to get into the high school they want their student to play for, the coach they want their son/daughter to play for. It is absolutely amazing how many of the star varsity players on just about every team in just about every sport don't live in that school's attendance area.  .....

http://www.menloathletics.com/schedule/0/3.php Click on this link. The batter at the top of the page (the Menlo College baseball website) is my oldest son, Joel. He's the starting right fielder for the Oaks. This will be his senior year at Menlo. They'll have a team that could go deep into the NAIA playoffs.

This may be a pivotal year for locally-based professional baseball players Dwight Childs and Brad Kilby.

Kilby, a former Laguna Creek and San Jose State pitcher, reports to the Oakland A’s minor league spring training camp in Arizona the first week of March. He spent much of 2010 on the injury list of the Sacramento River Cats, the A’s Triple-A franchise, with a shoulder injury. He had surgery in the off-season and has been rehabilitating.

Kilby is already 15 pounds under his playing weight a year ago and looking to shed more pounds. He’s also been the basketball scoreboard operator at Franklin High School this season, helping his brother, Bryan, the school’s activities director.

Last season Kilby spent some time in the bullpen with the A’s, but it appears as though he’ll be playing for Sacramento for the fourth year in a row…..

Childs, a catcher at Elk Grove High School and the University of Arizona, was drafted by the Cleveland Indians in 2009. He played in Class A Short Season Mahoning Valley that summer and was with Class A Lake County after expanded spring training in 2010.

Whereas Childs is regarded as a top defensive catcher, he’s struggled in the pros with his bat. He had a .093 batting average with Mahoning Valley in 15 games and a .103 mark in 16 games with Lake County.

He reports March 7 to the Indians’ minor league camp, also in Arizona.

“I know they’ll give me an opportunity, so I need to take advantage of it,” Childs said of his prospects for the 2011 season.

The Indians have a new catching coordinator, Dave Wallace, Childs said so he’s a little unsure of where he may be playing in the Indians’ organization.

“I just want to play,” Childs added. He says he’s been doing weight training to try to add pounds to his 175-pound frame.

“There’s lots of good talent in the minor league ranks right now,” Childs said of the Indian organization. “They’ve got good instructors, good coaches.”

He described current Indians’ starting catcher Carlos Santana, “a really good hitter” and thinks the Indians have some rising stars in its organization at several positions. ….

Cosumnes Oaks football coach Ryan Gomes recently visited former Laguna Creek and Oregon State linebacker Alan Darling in Oregon on a trip to that state. Darling played some professional football briefly in Europe and is now trying to get on the coaching staff of the Beavers, according to Gomes.  

Gomes said Bryson Littlejohn, who just wrapped up his college career this season at Oregon, and Jeremy Ross, a wide receiver/running back at Cal, both should be drafted by an NFL team in April. Gomes said the two former Cardinals have been working out in preparation for the upcoming draft combines.

NFL Draft Scout.Com lists Littlejohn as the 47^th best prospect at inside linebacker for the draft while Ross is listed as the 87^th top wide receiver coming out of college.  

Gomes used to be an assistant coach at Laguna Creek before coming over to Cosumnes Oaks as its head coach three seasons ago. …

Open Enrollment or Open Recruiting

What I have below is the text from a story I wrote in mid-December about the likelihood that open enrollment would continue in the Elk Grove school district. What this means is that parents will continue to send their student/athletes to the schools they feel would be the best for their son's/daughter's athletic career, not necessarily their academic career. The comments which follow the online story, EGCitizen.com, is telling.

The proposed re-drawing of attendance boundaries for the district’s nine high schools might not mean the end of open enrollment at some of the schools, a source from the Elk Grove Unified School District told the Elk Grove Citizen.

Members from the Board of Trustees have been holding public meetings to gain input on proposals to balance enrollment numbers. The most glaring disparages are on the west of Elk Grove, where Franklin has the second largest attendance numbers of all Sac-Joaquin Section schools.

The latest CBEDS numbers report Franklin has 2,730 students, while just a couple miles to the north, Laguna Creek has only 1,620. That school, according to the source, was built for about 2,600 students. Cosumnes Oaks, EGUSD’s newest school, has 1,470 enrolled in a facility built to handle 2,860.

There’s been open enrollment at all the district’s high schools with the exception of Franklin and Pleasant Grove, the two with largest enrollments.

The source added that the district might still have to offer open enrollment at the other seven EGUSD high schools because all facilities are under capacity.

Parents of student-athletes have taken advantage of the open enrollment policy to move their children into what they perceive as “better” athletic programs which may reward their child’s abilities, whether that’s through a perceived better chance at a college scholarship or play for a better coach.

None of the parents of student-athletes who live outside their child’s high school attendance boundary contacted for this story would talk to the Citizen on the record.

All did admit the success of the athletic program in place at their student-athlete’s current school was a factor in making the decision to enroll the teen at his/her current school, but they also claimed there were many other factors such as student climate at the school closer to home.

A parent at one of the recent public meetings on the proposed new attendance boundaries, John Glaser, said that he started looking for a new house to buy in the East Franklin area to improve his chances of having his child attend Toby Johnson Middle School and Franklin High School.

He mentioned what one realtor told him.

“Oh, you’re the second or third family that came out today wanting to move because of the boundary changes,’” Glaser recalled.

But, one parent contacted by the Citizen differed slightly in that observation.

“If parents want their student to attend one specific high school, they’ll find a way to enroll them there.”

The CIF, which governs high school athletics in California, doesn’t really have rules on where a family resides dictating which school the student attends.

“We really don’t care which school a student attends their freshman year,” Sac-Joaquin Section Director of Communications Will DeBoard said recently. “We do care if they begin changing high schools for athletic reasons after that point.”

Elk Grove has seen its enrollment dip to 1,986, mainly due to the construction of Pleasant Grove and Cosumnes Oaks in recent years. The lower enrollment number has been used as a reason in the recent lack of success in such sports as football and basketball.

But that hasn’t been the case in all sports at the district’s oldest high school.

The Thundering Herd’s softball team won the Sac-Joaquin Section Division I title last spring and the baseball team was the runner-up.

The wrestling team has either won or was the second-place finisher in the section team dual meet each of the past seven seasons.

– John Hull, Citizen Sports Writer