Like many in the community, we were distressed to learn that
Gilroy Unified School District’s valuable Slingerland program,
which teaches children reading using a multi-sensory, structured
approach, is in jeopardy.
Like many in the community, we were distressed to learn that Gilroy Unified School District’s valuable Slingerland program, which teaches children reading using a multi-sensory, structured approach, is in jeopardy.
The program is housed at Eliot School – you know, the school on the “bad” side of town – and has experienced declining enrollment in the last several years, according to district officials.
Last year, 80 kindergartners qualified through a district screening process for Eliot’s Slingerland program, but only 20 enrolled.
Because it’s expensive to train teachers in the Slingerland method – approximately $5,000 per teacher – and because the district has moved from a magnet school to a neighborhood school enrollment policy, the Slingerland program is in jeopardy.
The decision to not screen incoming kindergartners is an ominous sign.
We hope the district doesn’t cut Slingerland entirely; perhaps a compromise is in order here.
It’s possible that one of the reasons parents don’t enroll their children in the Slingerland program is that it’s housed at Eliot School, which is soon to be “closed” at the current location while the district demolishes the building and constructs a new facility. Eliot School students will be housed at the new middle school on Santa Teresa Boulevard for the duration of the construction project.
The impending upheaval at Eliot presents the district with an opportunity. Why not put a Slingerland classroom or two at each GUSD elementary school and continue screening students? The use of combination classes, in which first- and second-graders or second- and third-graders share a classroom and a teacher, a practice common in the Morgan Hill Unified School District and elsewhere, should ensure that a cost-effective student-to-teacher ratio is in place at each school.
The children would still benefit from an immersion Slingerland classroom, the district would further support its neighborhood school concept, parents wouldn’t be schlepping children to multiple elementary schools and students who would benefit from Slingerland teaching techniques wouldn’t be forced into regular classrooms where they are more likely to fall behind. Finally, if the program is not exclusively at Eliot, with its undeserved reputation due to its location, Slingerland enrollment is likely to increase.
The district’s goal of having 90 percent of students performing at grade level by June 2004 is much harder to reach if a significant chunk of Gilroy’s kids can’t read – and if the Slingerland method doesn’t produce results, then why did GUSD promote it all these years? We urge GUSD administrators and trustees to find a way to save the immersion Slingerland program.
