A pair of Gilroy schools are two of 20 in Santa Clara County being honored as recipients of the inaugural 2020 Vision awards of the SJ2020 initiative, which is a collaborative community effort to eliminate the achievement gap by the year 2020.
Alongside their fellow honorees, Luigi Aprea Elementary School and Ascencion Solorsano Middle School will be presented with the award Jan. 19 during the SJ2020 Annual Report Event at the Santa Clara County Office of Education, located at 1290 Ridder Park Drive in San Jose. Featured speakers include San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Charles Weis.
Richard Rodriguez is the principal of Luigi; Maria Walker is the principal of Solorsano.
Representatives from each of the 20 schools and their districts will be on hand to accept their awards; information on the educational practices that enabled them to make progress toward closing the gap also will be featured.
About SJ2020
The City of San Jose, the County Office of Education, school districts, charter schools, colleges, and business and nonprofit community agencies joined forces in the fall of 2009 to announce SJ2020, spurred by the persistent disparity in academic performance between two groups: Lower‐performing Hispanic/Latino and African‐American students, versus higher‐performing Asian and white/non-Hispanic students. In the city of San Jose alone, nearly half of all public school students tested are not proficient in their grade‐level skills.