References to The Alliance For Academic Excellence in articles
and editorials concerning Gilroy High School have prompted
questions about this organization’s identity, mission, and current
issues.
References to The Alliance For Academic Excellence in articles and editorials concerning Gilroy High School have prompted questions about this organization’s identity, mission, and current issues.
The group was created in 1996 when some concerned parents decided to research the reasons behind the high school’s poor reputation in the community and the subsequent large exodus of families from the district in ninth grade to private schools.
What was discovered was alarming, namely that the district‚s “one-size-fits-all” philosophy of education was a dismal failure and that students, including those college bound, were not having their individual needs met. Communication with the community was poor, and parents who had been bringing their complaints to the school district for years had been ignored.
The time had come to put the “public” back in the public school system. The Alliance evolved into a strong, grassroots organization of parents, teachers and community members committed to the virtues of a public school system but unwilling to accept a second-rate education for their children. It dedicated itself to promoting academic excellence at Gilroy High School and to demanding that all students, no matter what their needs, obtain an education that challenges them to their full potential.
The good news is that there is a new spirit on the Gilroy High School campus, and The Alliance has been successful in advocating and partnering with the administration for many changes affecting academics and the academic environment, including the creation of a College and Career Center, the reinstitution of honors classes, the use of a weighted GPA, and improved parent communication. Thanks are due to the vision of Superintendent Edwin Diaz and the Board of Education and the hard work done by the high school‚s teaching and administrative staff.
Now for the bad news. There are still many challenges ahead, and vision and hard work are simply not enough. We need leadership; we need a clear articulation by the ship’s captain in what direction we are sailing and when we are going to arrive.
Although the Board of Education has identified “parent involvement” as a top priority, the reality is that the district does not seem to fully embrace the parents‚ role in the education process. Public school is a contract between the state and its citizens to produce an educated populace; the parents are the clients, and those clients have a right, in fact an obligation to their children, to inform the school when the product isn’t satisfactory.
All of these factors have recently come into play once again. The Gilroy High School English Department’s core reading list presentation to the school board last spring backfired with a boom that continues to resound.
Instead of a detailed description of curriculum, skills, and the relationship of the core reading list to instruction, the board members and the public were subjected to a very lengthy and, given the topic at hand, very odd defense of controversial books.
Plenty of eyebrows were raised, and The Alliance approached the district with a list of questions that it wished to pose to the English Department prior to board approval of the 2003-04 list.
What criteria are used to make the selections? Is “controversial” one of those criteria? What process is used? Who is involved in that process? Why does our reading list look so different from reading lists at other high schools? Why do other high schools use textbooks and anthologies and GHS doesn’t? Why is our list light on classical books? Where are the instructional materials that support grammar, vocabulary, and other literary experiences besides novels? Where is the “English” in the English curriculum?
The parents were prepared to bring their concerns to the school board in June, but were convinced by the district that deadlines needed to be met. They were promised that their issues would be addressed prior to the school year in time to make changes. In the meantime, the parents continued to do their homework in preparation for a meeting with the high school and requested a copy of the English curriculum. After initially being told that the curriculum existed in the form of “maps,” the parents eventually discovered that no such maps, and hence no documented curriculum, existed.
Unfortunately, the district created the Reading Literature Advisory Group (RLAG), after the school year had already begun. It never had the support of the parents who voiced their concern that the charge of this group, the development of a reading list, did not match the real work that needed to be done in the English Department.
Reading materials, including core literature, are intended to support the instructional program, and the RLAG should not be asked to choose books until a complete curriculum is in place.
Furthermore, it has become apparent from the RLAG meetings that there are two opposing philosophies at work in the English Department, and one of them is not aligned with the Board of Education’s goals nor consistent with what has been implemented in the kindergarten-eighth grade programs.
The district curriculum leadership, whether that be Superintendent Diaz, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum Jacki Horejs, or GHS Principal Bob Bravo or all of them, must bring clarity to this matter immediately and set the following unambiguous goal: a comprehensive, content-rich, skill-based English curriculum that uses quality materials, is based on the California standards and is regularly monitored for quality control.
The Alliance strongly recommends one of the state-adopted, textbook-based curriculums used by most public high schools, including our neighbors Live Oak and San Benito High, and what is being used in Gilroy’s own elementary and junior high schools.
Parents are calling upon the Board of Education, the superintendent, and the principal of Gilroy High School to exercise the leadership that is their responsibility and for which The Alliance For Academic Excellence will hold them accountable.
This column is a product of The Alliance For Academic Excellence members Denise Apuzzo, Jeanette Bischoff, Martin Bress, Rhoda Bress, Bob Heisey, Kim Lemos, Jim McCann, Doug Stevens, Jackie Stevens, Mark Zappa and other Alliance members and supporters. The Alliance For Academic Excellence welcomes parents, teachers, and community members who support its goals.
Email Al**************@ao*.com
