Sierra Elementary: The Frustration of Many Efforts and no Gains

Sierra Elementary is an ethnically diverse, single track year-round school serving 639 students. It is one of thirty schools in a large sized K-6 elementary school district that serves 15,562 students. This attractive, modern looking school was built in 1969 and consists of a main building, a separate kindergarten building and seven portable classrooms. The main building has three large instructional areas called lofts, a well equipped media-library center, a computer lab, and a multipurpose room. Each loft contains two grades, 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6,180 students and six teachers. The first and second grade loft has been partitioned into self-contained classrooms, but the other two lofts remain largely open. The seven portable classrooms on the site house two special education classrooms, two self-contained regular classrooms; three portables are used for adult education and parent participation pre-school programs.