GILROY
– Gilroy Unified School District unveiled three alternatives
Tuesday for determining how it will distribute students from its
eight elementary schools into three middle schools starting next
year.
GILROY – Gilroy Unified School District unveiled three alternatives Tuesday for determining how it will distribute students from its eight elementary schools into three middle schools starting next year.
None of the three plans, however, are finding favor with a special district task force, nor with parents who want their kids to go to junior high with the peers they know from elementary school.
The task force is charged with creating middle school enrollment boundaries that strive for school capacities of 800 or less, socio-economic balance and residential proximity to campuses. However, some district parents are pushing for a feeder school system that would guarantee children from a particular elementary school would not be split up when entering junior high, typically a tumultuous time for adolescents, they say.
“You can’t just slam dunk and throw something like this on families,” says Stephanie Chisolm, a parent of three GUSD students, two of whom would be directly impacted by the alternatives. “The district slowly phased in neighborhood schools at the elementary level, why can’t they grandfather kids as they enter middle school?”
One plan, which relied primarily on how close residential areas were to campuses, has already been scrapped since its boundaries would create overcrowding issues at Ascencion Solorsano, the district’s new middle school set to open next fall. But two other alternatives were strong enough, the committee agreed, to get further consideration after some minor tweaking by the district’s enrollment consultant, Tom Williams of Tom Williams & Associates.
The second proposal honors the feeder system Chisolm and other parents are fighting for, but needs reworking to balance the middle schools socio-economically and keep South Valley Middle School from being overcrowded already next year.
“A feeder concept sounds great until you see what it ultimately translates into,” Williams said Tuesday.
Later in the session, Juanita Contin, the district’s director of student enrollment, noted that breaking up students from elementary schools was not necessarily a negative thing to do.
“It’s kind of good for kids to meet new people. That’s how the rest of their life will be,” Contin said.
A third proposal which holds student capacity at its desired level for all three middle schools, needs to be reformulated to prevent children from having to cross two safety hazards – Uvas Creek and Monterey Street – when walking to Ascencion Solorsano Middle School off Santa Teresa Boulevard.
“I can’t support any alternative that puts student safety at risk,” committee member and City of Gilroy Traffic Engineer Kristi Abrams told the district Tuesday.
The unveiling of the three preliminary maps Tuesday marked a sharp change in the district’s handling of the attendance boundary matter. At a similar session last week, parents and the media were made to sit 30 feet away from the group as it mulled over maps and discussed boundary alternatives for elementary and middle schools.
On Tuesday, the district allowed the public to view the boundary maps, but said they could not provide copies since the drafts are continuously being reworked.
The task force will make a formal recommendation to the school board in early 2003. On Jan. 7, the task force will meet again to do a driving tour with the maps Williams brings back. The group plans to chart the safest and most logical driving and walking routes to each school.
Contin confirmed Tuesday that Ascencion Solorsano would be housed with incoming sixth-graders and students from Eliot Elementary School which will be demolished and rebuilt next school year. No seventh- or eighth-graders will be housed there for at least the 2003-04 school year.
Contin also said current middle school students would not be uprooted from their schools, regardless of which boundary option the school board chooses.
