Ernest Righetti High School, located near Vandenburg Air Force Base, has an enrollment of 2,400 students. Students come from Santa Maria, Los Alamos, Casmalia, Sisquoc, and Guadalupe. The school includes more than 200 migrant students and almost 200 who require special education services.

KEYS came to Righetti in the spring of 1998. Angela Marese Boyle, president of the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District Faculty Association and Jim Armstrong, the principal, received training in the KEYS initiative and shared the information with the entire staff.

What encouraged the staff most to adopt the KEYS initiative to advance the school’s improvement efforts was that KEYS is data-based and offers choices. School employees, groups of parents, and students took the KEYS survey in the spring. In the fall, the trainers shared the information with the entire community.

The staff agreed to focus on several issues:

1. Staff development.
2. Communication between and among teachers and administrators.
3. The school’s use of teacher-made tests to assess students.
4. Instructional materials and their appropriateness to student needs.
5. School space.

The first four areas were near the quality take-off points where positive results begin to occur. The issue of space was not one that the school staff could really control —quickly or directly. Righetti High was designed to house 1,600 students. The lack of space remains a major concern to members of the staff.

Five committees created plans to address other issues. One goal was to provide high quality, state-of-the-art staff development for all school employees. Members of the staff enrolled in fast-track summer classes at local education institutions in a range of areas, among them technology.

The school also used a teacher mentor program, already in place at Righetti, to provide some training throughout the school year.

Planners were committed to the effort. The planning group on improving communication, for example, gave up duty-free lunches to accomplish goal-setting and to initiate a schoolwide newsletter. This group hosted potluck lunches to break down communication barriers. One team designed a reading improvement project to help ninth graders with low reading skills improve. Although the focus is on reading, teachers take the opportunity to work on students’ writing skills as well.

Another school initiative looked at how to align course curriculum with state-mandated standards.

Equally important, the planning teams have aligned the KEYS indicators with mandated standards and other reforms.

The staff continues their efforts to inform the community about the urgent need for a new facility. This will, of course, require passage of a bond issue and will require time. Community support is critical.

What impact has the KEYS initiative had on the community? The PTA is "gung ho"about KEYS. And the school board adopted KEYS as a district-wide goal.

Boyle called KEYS "one of the most exciting initiatives to come down the road in a long time."

In comparing KEYS to other initiatives at the school, the Association president noted that in the past, the staff has gotten excited over projects only to find that after the initial promotion, there was no follow-through. KEYS is different, she felt, because of the staff buy-in and the involvement of parents and students.

The element of making choices, inherent in KEYS, also appeals to the staff. The report comes to the staff. The staff looks at the survey results and indicators. Working as a team, members of the staff decide what to do. There is no mandate from on high on what to do with or about the indicators.

Said Boyle: "We have the data, we have the guidance, and that is going to put us on the road to creating the best learning environment for our students. We will be able to show that the data has resulted in improved student learning."