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).
Furthermore, the article’s references to absenteeism and suspensions appear to conflate situations from across the whole district, obliquely attributing incidents from other schools to Aliso. Putting aside the fact that absenteeism is an extremely complicated issue that is deeply rooted in socioeconomic and systemic challenges, it is inexplicable why the opinion piece attempts to shift the culpability for an entire district onto one of its schools. Presumably this strategy is used to artificially muster evidence further supporting the article’s central thesis; effectively, it casts Aliso as the scapegoat for other Carpinteria Unified School District campuses.
The article poses a central, “core” question: “Can we trust self-reported data from schools to tell the full story?” But it does so by insinuating — disingenuously and without evidence — that Aliso falsified its reports to the state in order to obtain California Distinguished School status. By willfully overlooking the reality that Aliso has attained this status multiple times in the past years, the article attempts to sacrifice our school’s hard-earned gains for its own cynical agenda.
Aliso School has a long history of overcoming the blight of racial segregation and economic inequality — and evidently, we still need to stay vigilant against uneducated and unsubstantiated accusations like the ones levied in this opinion piece. Our teachers, staff, families, and students deserve better than this. They deserve to be celebrated for their tenacity and resilience, for creating a joyful and positive environment that welcomes accountability and leaves space for growth and improvement. By manipulating falsehoods in order to diminish — and ultimately to deny — our hard-won achievements, this opinion piece joins the legacy of oppression that the Aliso School community has worked tirelessly to dismantle. Thankfully, recognition like the California Distinguished School designation is a testament to the fact that we are up to the challenge, and that we have no intention of slowing down.
Monica J. Solorzano is president of Parents for Aliso, aka the Aliso Elementary PTA.
