GILROY
– Parents and teachers are pressing school board trustees to
turn down a new academic plan for middle schools at their Thursday
meeting, unless the district guarantees students will receive
accelerated instruction by teachers trained to handle the
idiosyncracies and needs of gifted and talented ch
ildren.
GILROY – Parents and teachers are pressing school board trustees to turn down a new academic plan for middle schools at their Thursday meeting, unless the district guarantees students will receive accelerated instruction by teachers trained to handle the idiosyncracies and needs of gifted and talented children.
“Many of us support the new academic program for the middle schools, but how the program gets implemented is the big question,” said district parent Rob van Herk, whose children are in the Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) program. “We need some guarantees, and I hope the trustees who are here tonight only approve a plan this district can actually pull off.”
School board trustees Bob Kraemer and Tom Bundros observed the Tuesday night GATE parents meeting.
GATE parents worry that:
• Teachers without GATE training will teach their GATE students.
• Classrooms at the accelerated level will be overcrowded in order to save money by hiring a lesser amount of qualified teachers.
• GATE kids will be on a wait list for accelerated courses if there is no money to hire and train enough teachers.
• Grade-level students will be inappropriately mixed with their high-performing counterparts.
Superintendent Edwin Diaz has verbally guaranteed that GATE students would not be wait-listed for accelerated courses, but enrollment criteria, teacher training requirements and student-to-teacher ratios have not been approved.
District staff will recommend to the school board Thursday night to separate middle school students according to their ability levels starting next school year. The new plan would formally end full-time GATE instruction for sixth-graders, but the district is confident it can meet the needs of its highest-performing sixth-graders as well as expand accelerated instruction for seventh- and eighth-graders.
The district has already decided that when Ascencion Solorsano Middle School opens in 2003-04, all elementary schools will house only kindergarten through fifth-grade, placing all sixth-graders into one of three middle schools.
Solorsano will house incoming sixth-graders and Eliot Elementary School students, whose campus is being demolished and rebuilt over the next two years.
Vocal parents of children in the Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) program worry that tight budgets, and what they say is a lack of “implementation guarantees,” will override any good intentions behind the academic plan.
“We’ve heard a lot of intentions lately, but history in the district has shown they don’t always come true,” Rucker Elementary School teacher Sue Gamm said Tuesday.
The group is still debating whether it should formally oppose the district’s plan to place all sixth-graders in middle school next year.
Some GATE parents want to focus their attention on keeping sixth-graders at elementary school until Solorsano is ready to house seventh- and eighth-graders, likely in 2005-06. They say that was the intention when the district adopted the policy to move sixth-graders four years ago.
Gamm and Rucker parents are especially concerned for next year’s sixth-graders. Rucker is the only GUSD school to offer full-time GATE instruction and Gamm is the school’s sixth-grade GATE teacher. Because she has eight years of GATE experience and a nearly legendary reputation as a top teacher, Rucker parents are angry their children must enroll for middle school in sixth-grade.
“We were promised by the district our children would be in GATE from third through sixth grade,” Rucker parent Kevin Kang said. “Now we are being taken from a program that works and put into a program with a lot of unknowns. We don’t even know if there is a budget for what you want to do.”
The GATE program could see a 10 percent budget cut from the state over the next year and a half, making parents wonder if there will be money to provide the teacher training and student enrichment opportunities.
Other GATE parents argue that the middle school configuration is a done deal, so the group’s efforts should focus on making sure a good academic and extracurricular program gets implemented.
“Try to put yourselves in other people’s shoes,” GATE parent Jennifer Foxworth told Rucker parents. “All GATE kids deserve a top-notch program.”
