Elementary school parent clubs are starting to wonder why they
haven’t seen facilities improvements at their schools, and
representatives hope to get some answers at this Thursday’s school
board meeting.
Elementary school parent clubs are starting to wonder why they haven’t seen facilities improvements at their schools, and representatives hope to get some answers at this Thursday’s school board meeting.
At the heart of the issue is Measure P, the $150 million school facilities bond voters passed last November. While much of the $50 million already collected through this bond has gone into Christopher High School – the city’s new and second comprehensive high school – parents complain many other schools have been ignored. In particular, the parents – many of whom labored on the Measure P campaign – are looking for marked improvements at elementary schools. District administrators said these improvements are on the way, as will be outlined in a plan Thursday.
“I want to hear from the district office what the intent of the money is,” said Glen View Elementary School Parent Club President Karin Clements. “Obviously the main body goes to Christopher High School but I want assurance that the schools that are 30 to 40 years old are brought up to date.”
Seven of the district’s eight elementary school parent clubs met recently to discuss questions and concerns surrounding school facilities and pinpointed one recurring theme – a lack of information, parents said.
“It’s like a hornets nest of gossip if you don’t tell parents what’s going on,” said El Roble Parent Club President Charleen Lucio. “We want to make sure that we’re moving forward and that we’re not forgotten. There’s a lot of discontent surrounding facilities. We settled in the past. We want to be a part of the process now.”
With two children at El Roble, Lucio said she’s just happy the district is finally fencing the school in. Even though the classrooms are “falling apart,” traffic is “horrendous” and a perennial ant problem plagues some classrooms, the fence and the hiring of a new principal are steps in the right direction, Lucio said.
“We want to make things better,” she said.
Now that a year has passed since voters approved Measure P, parents are wondering when schools will reap the rewards of months of campaigning.
“As a parent, I feel kind of like I’ve been taken,” said Rucker Parent Club President Steve Bryant. “Last year, they were saying vote for Measure P and Rucker will get worked on. Now we’re hearing it’ll be two years before construction.”
As two of the oldest schools in the district, Rucker and Rod Kelley are top priorities, Superintendent Deborah Flores said. She welcomed the parent club presidents to the board meeting and looked forward to hearing from them.
“We’re going to be moving at a very fast pace, with Rod Kelley and Rucker as the most immediate,” Flores said.
Yet, she confirmed that it could be two to three years before those schools are rebuilt. The design and approval process alone takes 12 to 18 months, followed by a year of construction, she said.
“We’re moving forward as quickly as we can,” she said. “When you look at last year, we did as many projects as we could in one year. Now we’re moving on to the next three,” which include modernizing or rebuilding Rucker and Rod Kelley and completing the second phase of construction at Christopher High School.
According to a list of approved projects and estimates that district staff will present Thursday, about $14 million will be doled out to each Rucker and Rod Kelley schools from the Measure P fund. The district plans to completely rebuild Rucker, a rural school in north Gilroy, adding a kindergarten and five classrooms for upper grades to accommodate future growth. Rod Kelley will receive a new food services area, a library, a computer lab, restrooms, five additional classrooms and a block of permanent classrooms to replace 12 existing portables.
“From my perspective, the conditions of the school just aren’t conducive to a great learning experience,” Bryant said of Rucker. “It’s the little things like the bathrooms are old and broken … on the fields, the grass is half dead … (and) the school doesn’t have the capability to put computers in classrooms.”
Bryant wondered why Las Animas Elementary School, a new school in southwest Gilroy that is set to get a new wing of classrooms and a cluster of portables, seemed to take priority over Rucker.
“Las Animas and some of the other schools with pretty new campuses are still getting stuff built in,” Bryant said. “This year, we have all the classrooms full and bursting at the seams and nothing’s happening. I don’t understand the process of why other schools are getting stuff and Rucker’s getting nothing. Out of all the schools I see, Rucker is falling apart.”
As a parent of a former Rucker student herself, Flores said she’s intimately familiar with the school’s issues.
“I know the condition of that facility on a first-hand basis,” she said. “No one is saying Rucker doesn’t need to be replaced. We all know that. Rucker has been at the top of the list, but because of the capacity in the southern part of Gilroy, the decision was made to add a new wing at Las Animas.”
Unlike rebuilding Eliot or Las Animas elementary schools, rebuilding Rucker involves extensive planning and design, she said. Although Eliot was built on the same site as the old school, the district was able to relocate those students to a middle school during construction. Likewise, Las Animas was built on a completely different site so the district didn’t have to deal with ongoing construction interfering with classroom activities. At Rucker, the district will likely rebuild one part of the campus at a time as to not displace students during construction.
Some parents were particularly angry that the district performed some upgrades at the district office before schools.
“What I’ve seen is the first thing that got done was the district office got some new carpet,” Clements said. “That doesn’t benefit my kids.”
However, Flores said the district had to replace the carpet due to a number of injuries from people tripping.
Plans aside, parents were still frustrated by the slow pace of construction.
“It’s been almost a year and the funds are still sitting there,” Clements said. “I’ve been at (Glen View) for five years and I think we need a few things … The classrooms are old and outdated and smell moldy. It looks like you’re stepping onto the set of ‘Leave it to Beaver’.”
