Editor, Manteca Bulletin

As the November election approaches, a hot topic and ballot item is Measure I in Ripon. As an educator at Ripon High School and lifelong Riponite, I am aware of the needs of the district — especially those at the high school.  Many in the community feel the initiative is filled with “wants” rather than “needs”, and I’d like to address one specific need of our school: the need for a new science lab. 

The current classrooms are outfitted nearly identically to the t classrooms when I was a Ripon High student three decades ago. As new schools are built, the lab settings have changed tremendously and are more suitable for the types of collaborative learning educators use in the 21st century. We also do not have enough science rooms to adequately accommodate the number of students we have. We currently have four full-time science teachers and one part-time teacher. However, we only have three fully-equipped science classrooms. During the current 2018-19 school year, we have a total of nine sections of laboratory science not taking place in laboratory classrooms. In order to fully implement the science standards and curriculum, we need to have the proper number classrooms and equipment to carry out what we need to cover. This will be an ongoing issue since our students are now required to take three years of lab science to graduate, and enrollment is projected to continue to increase in the coming years.

I would encourage residents of Ripon to reach out to the teachers of Ripon - those of us in the educational trenches on a daily basis, doing the best we can with the resources we have to educate the students of Ripon. We can do better, but we need help. Approving Measure I would take care of the true needs of our campuses. Let’s work together as a community to make sure our kids get the quality education they need and deserve.

Ann Pendleton

Science Department Chair

Ripon High School