GILROY
– If standardized testing wasn’t stressful enough on students,
teachers and school administrators, Tuesday morning put them to the
test.
A power outage that affected parts of north and east Gilroy also
darkened two elementary campuses in Gilroy Unified School
District.
GILROY – If standardized testing wasn’t stressful enough on students, teachers and school administrators, Tuesday morning put them to the test.
A power outage that affected parts of north and east Gilroy also darkened two elementary campuses in Gilroy Unified School District.
The lights turned off at Antonio Del Buono, 9300 Wren Ave., and Luigi Aprea, 9225 Calle Del Rey, just after 9 a.m. as standardized testing started.
“It’s a big effect,” said Tammy Gabel, principal of Del Buono.
Testing irregularities, such as giving too much or too little time to complete a test, can invalidate an entire school’s scores for the year. In the past, schools have had scores invalidated when a teacher read the wrong instructions for a test or read instructions twice.
The two schools should be in the clear. Students at Luigi continued testing by sunlight entering the classrooms through windows and doors.
“I would say if it would have been a cloudy day, or if it would have been in the afternoon, it would have disturbed the testing to a degree that it could have caused some problems,” Principal Sergio Montenegro said.
The students volunteered to continue testing by sunlight, he said.
“It was like a hiccup, if you will, and the kids just rose to the challenge,” he said. “I’m just hoping that this didn’t have an adverse effect (on scores).”
Electricity went out for 4,778 Pacific Gas & Electric customers throughout north Gilroy at 9:01 a.m., according to PG&E spokesman Jeff Smith.
A transformer failure caused the outage, Smith said. He said he could not give the transformer’s location.
By rerouting power, PG&E restored service to 1,628 customers 25 minutes after the lights went out, Smith said.
“Another big chunk came on just before noon,” Smith said. The last batch of customers had their power restored at 1:50 p.m.
The lights at Del Buono were still out at 9:40 a.m. and testing was postponed until this morning.
“I talked to the state already … so we’re OK,” said Esther Corral-Carlson, GUSD’s director of student assessment.
“What they said is that we can go ahead and stop where we’re at,” Gabel said. “And because this part of the test is not timed, we’re OK. (The students have) had a lot of test practice and preps and stuff, so we think they’ll be able to pick it up where they left off.”
Most teachers had just finished reading the test instructions when the power went out. They will not be allowed to re-read them. The district has a 21-day window in which to complete all its testing, so the one-day delay will not penalize the school, Corral-Carlson said.
Montenegro said that, as long as the schools follow the state’s instructions, they shouldn’t have to worry about invalid scores.
“We actually would have had more flexibility because this was out of our sphere of influence,” he said.
Still, the disruption caused everyone some stress, so he hopes things go better the rest of the week.
“I think I aged a few years today.”
Staff Writer Peter Crowley contributed to this report.
