During a May 17 Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) Board of Education meeting, several parents phoned in to object to the closure of the Center for International Curriculum (CIC) at Long Beach Polytechnic High School—one of LBUSD’s 45 career “pathways” programs.
More than 2,500 have signed an online petition called “Save Long Beach Poly CIC Program,” begun earlier this month by Anais Xitlali Lopez. The petition is addressed to LBUSD Board members and Dr. Jay Camerino, assistant superintendent of high schools.
“CIC is a pivotal part of the community and we firmly believe that to create true equity, we should be working toward implementing MORE magnet programs, not less,” Lopez states in the petition.
LBUSD is “rebranding” CIC to become one of its Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs, the petition states. That change will no longer allow CIC to be a specialized magnet program.
“CIC will lose access to honors and AP (advanced placement) classes and force students to take specific courses as part of the comprehensive program of study,” according to Save CIC’s social-media site.
Lopez called for a protest rally on May 17 outside the board meeting at Browning High School to call attention to the cause.
Though she didn’t directly speak to protesters, Superintendent Dr. Jill Baker assured parents and students during the meeting that the CIC program is not shutting down.
“While there’s been a decrease in first-choice applications for 9th graders into CIC, there are no plans to close or phase out the CIC pathway,” Baker said. “While the CIC team has been discussing for several years how to improve CIC, there have been no decisions to change the CIC program.”
Baker said LBUSD’s pathways programs have been working to ensure its themes and curricula provide students with a “rigorous and relevant” academic experience. Baker also said CTE courses are now embedded into most LBUSD pathways programs.
“These courses connect students to the real-world application of the pathway theme,” Baker said. “For example, in an engineering pathway, a teacher who has been an engineer is qualified to teach a CTE course on engineering so that students can benefit from the teacher’s professional experience in addition to the experience with the classroom curriculum across our district CTE courses.”
Protesters accused LBUSD of wanting to incorporate CTE into CIC to capture state and federal funds for programs that foster higher graduation rates and facilitate job-finding, according to the Save CIC social-media site.
The petition calls for Board and staff transparency in changes to CIC being discussed. A recent audit found that LBUSD is lacking such transparency, causing some distrust in the community.
Former student Frank Soares commented on May 17 to the movement’s social-media site that he received a “great” education through CIC and many of his classmates went on to top universities such as UC Berkeley, UC Los Angeles, University of Southern California, UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara.
“It is what it is—a pathway, just like the others,” Soares said. “Why take that away, or weaken it?”
With the motto “preparing for a global future,” the CIC has offered honors college-preparatory courses with a global approach since 1982, including Japanese and Chinese language instruction.
“CIC has a 100% college attendance rate, 91% retention rate over four years and a near 100% graduation rate,” CIC states on its district website, noting the program fell short of 100% graduation by only one student in 2016.
Across the top of the site is the statement, “CIC is NOT in the process of phasing out or shutting down.”
