GILROY
– Planning for the future of the school district began two weeks
ago, and although most of the meetings are done, parents, students
and community members are still encouraged to offer their two
cents.
Nearly halfway through its two-month Strategic Planning process,
the Gilroy Unified School District and school board have received
input from school staff, parents, students and the community at
large on its direction for the next three years.
GILROY – Planning for the future of the school district began two weeks ago, and although most of the meetings are done, parents, students and community members are still encouraged to offer their two cents.
Nearly halfway through its two-month Strategic Planning process, the Gilroy Unified School District and school board have received input from school staff, parents, students and the community at large on its direction for the next three years. But turnout at the planning forums only represents a small portion of GUSD parents, so the district is inviting people to submit their ideas on-line.
“We want to get people’s input,” School Board President Jaime Rosso said. “And we want to make sure that we get the benefit of (many) different ideas on what we’re doing and how to improve what we’re doing.”
Several meetings in the past two weeks were sparsely attended: Roughly 20 middle and high school parents attended a forum at Gilroy High School, about 40 elementary parents attended a forum at Antonio Del Buono and no one turned out for a business and community forum on April 3.
“I would certainly like to see more input and more participation and it always seems like we could get more … and it’s hard to get that,” Rosso said. “A lot of times, it seems that you get some of the same people.”
By logging on to the GUSD web site and following the Strategic Planning link, parents can view the presentation shown during each of the forums that looks at the district’s past three years. A form to submit ideas can be filled out according to the process used at each meeting.
There are seven areas for feedback, including accountability, teaching and learning, technology and parent/community engagement that were identified by the district’s core planning team of trustees, school staff, parents and district staff.
Parents at the meetings used posters to write the “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats” for each area. There were also posters available where people could write their miscellaneous concerns.
For those using the web form, strengths refers to what the district has done well in that area; weaknesses are what the district has done poorly; opportunities are additional things the district can focus on now that some progress was made; and threats are barriers that will inhibit progress.
“We’ll gather information from each of the forums so that the core team can have all of that information from each stake-holder group … so they have all the raw data,” Superintendent Edwin Diaz said. “With the core team, we want to be able to come up with the top three or four priorities in each area.
“We’d also like to have the board be able to come up with at least the beginning of a mission statement and also to identify the core values that were identified in the first strategic planning meeting.”
One parent at the meeting for middle and high school parents on March 30 wanted to see the district’s accountability component provide the names of employees responsible for specific areas of improvement.
“I feel I have a stake in what goes on here,” Chris Parmentier said. “When I was listening to the lecture, all of the … items here, in my mind, speak to accountability, responsibility.”
She said it is not clear who is held responsible for which areas.
Parmentier, who has a freshman and a senior at GHS, said the SWOT process helped her know where to list her concerns, but she thought parents might feel limited by the structure and the categories.
The majority of parents at the forums said the categories were so broad that their suggestions could fall under several.
One parent who attended three planning meetings said she will wait to judge the SWOT process until it’s completed in May, but she saw both plusses and minuses to the procedure.
“It just seemed like a lot of the topics were so broad that people weren’t sure what they were being asked to reflect on,” said Jackie Stevens, who as a member of the Superintendent’s Parent Advisory Council attended the core planning meetings, as well as the meeting for GHS parents. “It’s very, very broad and even things like ‘effective use of technology’ – are we talking about in the classroom, are we talking about helping the district save money?”
The categories may have been broad on purpose, Stevens said, to get as many responses as possible.
At the elementary parents’ forum, which attracted a large number of Spanish-speaking parents, two such parents offered some general advice to the district.
“We want to have a better relationship between the teachers and students and parents … to have a better future and raise the level of all students,” said Abraham Calderón, who has two children at Antonio Del Buono.
“We should help those in the lower levels so they can be equal,” said Rina, his wife.
GHS students were invited to help with planning at a 7 a.m. on Monday, March 29 – not the easiest time to recruit teenagers.
“There were only three students,” said Sarah Carbonel, senior class president, who was one of the three.
Carbonel said she wanted to give whatever feedback she could as a student representative and was impressed with the amount of data presented by the district.
“Prior to going there, I had no idea it was this complicated to get things done,” she said.
The students generated some original ideas of their own, Carbonel said, even some that flew in the face of current school district policy nation-wide: One student suggested taking the emphasis off test scores because some students aren’t good a taking tests.
The district will develop criteria the core team will use to judge each of the suggestions, Diaz said.
“Even though there’s some conflicting recommendations there, there’s also a lot of consensus there, so I think to pull out the major themes isn’t going to be as difficult as we think,” he said.
The board planned to discuss the plan during a study session Saturday, but since most trustees attended one or more of the forums, they will wait until later in the process.
“We’re going to be the ultimate deciders, so we decided that, based on the things that we wanted to address … we would wait for the input to come in and then have our discussion about the Strategic Plan,” Rosso said.
Stevens suggested parents use the web, or any means necessary, to participate in the Strategic Plan.
“As a parent representative, I really encourage parents to go online make phone calls: Call the district office, call the site administrator, talk to somebody and give the feedback because the district is asking,” Stevens said. “People need to step up and be heard.”
Such in-depth planning is somewhat of a luxury for the district in these tight budget times. Each of the meetings are facilitated and recorded by consultants from the Stupski Foundation. The non-profit foundation that works with school districts to ensure that students get a high-quality education, regardless of race or income is also paying for the process that Diaz estimates will cost about $40,000.
