GILROY
– On any given weekday afternoon, a handful of school buses pull
into South Valley Middle School’s parking lot, where students are
dropped off or picked up, before continuing on to other schools,
dropping off more students as they go.
GILROY – On any given weekday afternoon, a handful of school buses pull into South Valley Middle School’s parking lot, where students are dropped off or picked up, before continuing on to other schools, dropping off more students as they go.
Next year, things will be different. There will be no more taxi service bringing five or more buses to each school, district officials say.
“Now, it will be one bus,” said Darren Salo, Gilroy Unified School District’s transportation supervisor. “It will pick students up, go to one school and back home.”
The district announced earlier this year that, as part of about $2.5 million in new budget cuts, transportation personnel hours and bus routes will be slashed.
Students who attend schools outside their attendance area no longer will ride buses to school. The change will drastically reduce the number of bus routes criss-crossing the district and save GUSD more than $315,000 over the next two school years, school officials said.
The new policy also has the potential to affect students in special programs more than other students.
The district’s dual immersion program, where students are taught half in English and half in Spanish, is only offered at Las Animas Elementary School. Similarly, Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) is only offered at Rucker Elementary School. Both programs serve students from throughout the district.
The dual immersion program could be significantly affected by the busing changes because many students come from outside the school’s attendance area, Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services Steve Brinkman said. The Las Animas attendance area is roughly bordered by Mantelli Drive to the north, Monterey Road to the east, First Street to the south and Kern Avenue to the west.
“It’s going to impact any school whose percentage of attendance area students is low,” he said. “Las Animas is a school with 50 percent of its students coming from outside the attendance area.”
Principal Sylvia Reyes said students at Las Animas come from all over the district.
“We’re in kind of a weird situation with our school because right now, our attendance area is here,” she said. “Two years from now, it’s not going to be here.”
The district plans to re-build Las Animas in south Gilroy by 2006.
“Especially in our dual immersion program, the kids are from all over the place,” Reyes said.
Parents who want their children to continue in the program already are seeking a solution to the transportation issue.
“The parents in the dual immersion program have offered to coordinate parent-to-parent with any parent who has an issue with, or problem with, transportation,” Reyes said. “I think that shows a lot of commitment to keeping those students in that program here at the school.”
Dual immersion serves about 140 students in kindergarten through third grade. Reyes did not know how many come from outside the Las Animas area.
Reyes echoed other district officials’ worries that parents whose children are riding the buses to schools across town aren’t seeing the whole impact in transportation cuts.
“I don’t think the public’s getting it,” Salo said. “If their child is in grades three, four or five, and they’re attending school outside their attendance area, there will no longer be transportation for them. We’re not saying they can’t continue to go to (that school), we’re just saying we can’t continue to provide transportation for them.”
To inform parents of the end of out-of-area busing, the district mailed letters to the parents of all 1,643 students attending schools outside their attendance area.
However, only 350 of those students are actually riding the buses. Those families are getting another letter this week, along with a phone call. Last month, the transportation department held three public meetings to talk about the changes.
“We’re trying to make that contact because we don’t want, at the beginning of the school year, the parents finding out that there’s no transportation,” Reyes said.
Steve Gilbert, principal of Rucker, said most parents of GATE students at the school are able to provide their own transportation.
“There’s plenty of concern about that, but with most of the parents, there’s an understanding that something’s got to give,” he said. “The bulk of the parents we have spoken with have indicated that they will find a way to get their kids to school.”
Carpooling, Gilbert said, “is an option – but we’ve got parents who carpool now.”
Another side effect of the transportation cuts – compounded by the district’s move to neighborhood schools in general – is a two-fold increase in transfers back to students’ neighborhood schools.
“This year, so far, we’ve processed about 200 (transfer requests) for elementary schools, and we’re still getting some more because of (the) changes in transportation,” said Juanita Contin, GUSD’s director of student enrollment.
Since neighborhood schools began last year, by the start of next school year, kindergarten through second-grade students all should be at their attendance area schools.
There are some bus routes from outside attendance areas that will continue next year: Students attending Eliot, temporarily located at Solorsano Middle School, will be bused from the Sixth Street campus to the school near Eagle Ridge Golf Club. Also, because Solorsano will not have eighth grade until 2005-06, those students will have busing to Gilroy’s other two middle schools in the south and east sides of town.
“There is a feeling that more students are actually riding the buses out of convenience,” Salo said. “We have students that are riding the bus to daycare, to baby-sitters, after-school sports, dance lessons because they’re using it as a taxi because they know they can get anywhere in town.”
