GILROY
– A standing-room-only crowd packed the 350-capacity Gilroy High
School Theater Thursday night, in a first-ever winter orientation
that exceeded organizers’ most hopeful turnout expectations.
GILROY – A standing-room-only crowd packed the 350-capacity Gilroy High School Theater Thursday night, in a first-ever winter orientation that exceeded organizers’ most hopeful turnout expectations.
Even the parking lot of the ninth- through 12th-grade high school couldn’t hold the hundreds of parents, eighth-graders and transfer students who, despite the rain, arrived Thursday night wanting to learn more about the academic and extracurricular programs offered at GHS.
“Our goal was to address student and parent interests and needs, and I think we did,” GHS Principal Bob Bravo said. “I’d love to take credit for it, but this was an idea brought to me by parents and they followed through well. They brought their perspective into the planning of this and it paid off.”
The orientation featured panels of GHS teachers and administrators and a cross-section of student leaders who touched on topics ranging from academic and vocational instruction to school safety and extracurricular programs.
“This was exactly what we thought people wanted to know. Last year’s (spring) orientation was more about how to graduate from high school. This orientation gave parents a chance to get an overview of what the school can offer them,” said GHS parent Rhoda Bress, one of the event organizers.
The one-and-a-half-hour event was billed as an informational session, but organizers figured a large segment of those in attendance would be families deciding whether they would attend GHS or sacrifice the time and money necessary to attend private school.
In these budget-tightened times, recruiting and retaining students takes on added significance. Each year, the district takes in roughly $4,700 per student from government funding sources. A recent Dispatch survey revealed that roughly 900 Gilroy students attend less than a dozen Bay Area private schools. There are at least 160 private schools in the Bay Area.
GUSD Trustee Tom Bundros, whose daughter Angeliki attends a private school in San Jose, said the orientation is making his family consider whether to switch to GHS. He said the half-dozen Gilroy girls he carpooled to Presentation High School Friday morning were not surprised by the positive parent reaction to the orientation.
“They all seemed to know already that the high school’s reputation is improving. Several of them said they wanted to attend GHS,” Bundros said.
Bundros could not attend Thursday’s session, but said his wife did and was extremely excited and impressed with how the school presented itself.
“She was watching faces, and she said people were receiving the information very positively,” Bundros said.
If Lori Parshall’s reaction Thursday night serves as any indication, GHS will be receiving at least some of the families teetering between public and private school. Marshall’s son Tim is a St. Mary Parish School eighth-grader leaning toward attending public school instead of an expensive private high school next year.
“I had safety concerns with GHS, but hearing a parent tonight say the security at the school was good and that she felt her child was safe there made me feel a whole lot better,” Parshall said.
James Marquez, a GHS alumnus and a father of an eighth-grader, decided before last night that his daughter would attend Gilroy High next year. After the Thursday night session, he was feeling a lot better about that decision.
“When you’re a parent you never look at your high school the same way as when you attended it,” Marquez said. “I feel better about it now.”
Student body President Brian Calimpong answered one the most critical question on the minds of many potential GHS parents when an audience member asked, “Why should my child attend GHS?”
Calimpong talked about the various programs offered at the school, but ended his response with the following observation: “High school is what you make of it, wherever you decide to go.
The end of the session was capped off with a performance by the GHS show choir and a raffle that included Mustang memorabilia. The GHS jazz band entertained families as they made their way into the theater Thursday night.
