My column last week on Gilroy High School elicited a lot of
positive feedback from the community. As the days pass, I keep
hearing from families who had left Gilroy Unified and are now
coming back to Gilroy High.
My column last week on Gilroy High School elicited a lot of positive feedback from the community. As the days pass, I keep hearing from families who had left Gilroy Unified and are now coming back to Gilroy High. Many of the students returning to Gilroy bring with them parents who are actively involved in the greater Gilroy community, and I look forward to working with them in the near future.
Last Wednesday, I had a completely different educational experience. In an odd twist of fate, the date of the planned “Principal Appreciation” at Brownell had to be postponed because parents were scheduled to meet with the State Intervention Team. This team spent a week at Brownell trying to come up with a cure for an illness that doesn’t exist.
There is something “wrong” at Brownell, but it isn’t anything that the West Ed consultants or the State of California will be able to fix. What is “wrong” at Brownell is that the campus is too crowded. Another “problem” is that some test scores of students who are no longer at Brownell were a few points higher than some test scores of students who are currently enrolled there.
At Brownell, like everywhere else in Gilroy, the school takes the students as they come. While it would be wonderful if this year’s crop of “low socio-economic” students scored higher than the group from three years ago, it really isn’t a useful way to measure school progress. Last year, the category of “white” students scored lower than the “white” students who have already left Brownell. This is entirely predictable. Different groups of students, no matter how you categorize them, score differently year to year on standardized tests.
So a group of parents sat down to talk to the education specialists, and there was very little we could say. There were standard questions to be asked. There was little time to tell these people what they really need to hear. The “problems” at Brownell are a figment of the state’s fertile imagination.
The state superintendent of public instruction is quoted as saying that it would be unfair to continue to let the students languish. I have a bone to pick with Mr. O’Connell on this point. I don’t know if he has even visited Brownell, and that remark really irks me. I am on that campus at least twice a week, and there is not a lot of languishing going on.
The vast majority of students at Brownell are there by choice. There is a waiting list to get into the school, even as its population nears 1,000 students. The teachers at Brownell are as good as can be found at any other middle school. Most of them are good, a few are great, and a very few should find another career. The office staff is wonderful. The administrators are extremely supportive of students, staff and parents. And most importantly, the kids are happy at Brownell. Doesn’t that count for something?
As my oldest child exits Brownell, and my fifth grader eagerly awaits his turn to be running with the big kids, I reflect on how much has really changed since I was an adolescent. The truth is, almost nothing has changed. I went to Catholic school, and by seventh grade, we were wearing our uniform skirts rolled up so they were really not appropriate attire for Friday Mass. We didn’t have belly shirts, but every one of the girls would wear a tube top underneath the white uniform blouse. We passed around “slam” books. We thought we were too cool for the campus. We had crushes, first kisses and all the accompanying drama that is part of being 13.
We may be living in a different world, but for seventh and eighth graders almost nothing has changed. I see myself in the faces of those kids at Brownell and I am hopeful that all will be well in their world.
I will have to wait a bit longer to find out what the big “fix” will be for Brownell. The district will be compelled by the state to rubber stamp whatever plan the paid educational consultants come up with. I just hope that some of the voices of the students and parents will be more compelling to these people than the words of Jack O’Connell.
