As members of the Aliso Elementary School PTA Board, we feel compelled to respond to the recent opinion piece in the Santa Barbara Independent titled “ The School-to-Prison Pipeline Perpetuated .” While we fully support efforts to promote accountability and equity in education, this particular piece presents a factually inaccurate and deeply misleading portrayal of Aliso — one that stands in stark contrast to the vibrant, resilient, and nurturing school community that we know so well.
One fact the opinion piece does get right is that Aliso did earn the designation of a California Distinguished School this year — for the fourth time in its history. This is a selective honor awarded through a rigorous state review process requiring schools to demonstrate real gains in student learning, while also meaningfully closing achievement gaps. The opinion piece begins by claiming that Aliso “reported in 2023–2024 academic gains for just 147 students — all from grades 3–5 — despite reporting overall academic performance well below state standards and extremely high suspension rates. These tested students represent less than half of the school’s total enrollment of 335; approximately 160 students were excluded from testing entirely.”
It is important to note that the California Distinguished Schools Program only reviews test scores from grades 3-5. The students that are “excluded” from testing are those in grades K-2, which are grades that do not receive any form of state testing or evaluation. And regarding the “extremely high suspension rate,” it is worth pointing out that the California Department of Education School Dashboard reported exactly zero suspensions for Aliso in 2024 - a number that could not be further from the rampant quantity claimed by the opinion piece (notably, at no point did the author reach out to Aliso administrators to verify any of the claims that were subsequently published in her op-ed).