GILROY
– Frustrated parents of Gilroy’s gifted elementary and middle
school students will, if necessary, rely on themselves and teachers
outside the district to deliver the specialized education they say
their kids need and deserve.
Roughly 50 of them will meet Dec. 4 to set Gifted And Talented
Education (GATE) program objectives, a timeline for meeting those
objectives and give notice to the school district that if it
doesn’t comply, parents will seek academic enrichment for their
children on their own.
District officials are not invited to the Dec. 4 session.
GILROY – Frustrated parents of Gilroy’s gifted elementary and middle school students will, if necessary, rely on themselves and teachers outside the district to deliver the specialized education they say their kids need and deserve.
Roughly 50 of them will meet Dec. 4 to set Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) program objectives, a timeline for meeting those objectives and give notice to the school district that if it doesn’t comply, parents will seek academic enrichment for their children on their own.
District officials are not invited to the Dec. 4 session.
“We’ll come up with our own GATE classes and submit the bill to the district,” said Susan Bassi, a GATE parent.
If the district doesn’t pay up, Bassi said the group would consider legal action.
“I’m actually kind of stunned in hearing this,” said GUSD Assistant Superintendent Jacqueline Horejs. “We have a process, we have formed a workgroup and we have a charter. We’re operating in good faith. We may not have taken a giant leap forward, but we’ve taken some steps forward.”
The group of parents is not telling the district where it will meet Dec. 4. They say the group will assign tasks to individual parents. Some will research, for instance, how other districts are providing GATE instruction and whether there is precedence for contracting GATE services on their own.
“We need to find out what we’re legally entitled to if the district doesn’t provide appropriate GATE instruction,” Bassi said.
Parents took matters into their own hands one day after a Tuesday night Parent Advisory Committee meeting that revealed more than one sticking point for the GATE program. The meeting seemed doomed from the start, parents say, when only nine people showed up.
Mailers that were supposed to notify parents of the meeting were sent out late by the district. As of Wednesday, some GATE parents had still not received notification. Complicating matters, the district board room – the site of October’s advisory meeting – was booked, meaning the session had to move to the Antonio Del Buono library.
“I didn’t want to cancel the meeting,” explained Joe Guzicki, the GUSD’s director of special education.
As for the late notification, Guzicki said he wanted to include a final agenda with the mailer so parents could be better informed going into the meeting. The agenda needed to be approved by Horejs, who was out of town earlier this week on business.
The district said parents at last month’s advisory meeting were told of the Tuesday session and that e-mails had been sent out to parents as well.
“I wasn’t aware how many hands a bulk mailing had to pass through before it gets to mailboxes. I know now it’s not the most efficient way to get word out to parents,” Guzicki said. “This won’t happen again.”
Parents, however, say they’re seeing the same thing happening to their children this school year as in year’s past.
“They just seem to be stuck in neutral,” said Rucker parent Denise Baer-Apuzzo. “A lot of parents feel that GATE is a back burner issue and has never been a priority for the district.”
Naming the district’s special education director as the person in charge of the program for Gilroy’s most talented students did not give parents much reason to feel differently, some parents said.
Parents complain that the district has yet to finalize its waiting list for getting into Rucker Elementary, Gilroy’s only full-time GATE school. And they say the pull-out program, which takes GATE kids out of their regular classes for enrichment courses, is not rigorous academically and needs to build on what students learned the year before.
The district currently provides a potpourri of pull-out courses. This semester offered astronomy to students. Last year, Spanish was the pull-out course.
Last month parents complained that the pull-out program should have started in September at the beginning of the school year. Instead, it began in late October.
“According to parents, kids are taking themselves out of the pull-out program. If they know it’s not worth their time, then what does that tell you?” said Baer-Apuzzo.
On Election Day Nov. 5, the school district passed a bond measure that provides $69 million to construct and renovate school facilities. Bassi worries that the district’s promises to act on GATE parents’ suggestions and concerns last month were nothing more than “pre-bond rhetoric.”
Guzicki firmly denies that charge.
“There are a lot of hard working people working on this. It’s a top issue for everyone,” Guzicki said.
Guzicki said that in roughly the next 10 days, the district will send a letter to parents to see if they want GATE meeting information to be sent by mail, e-mail or both. Also during that time, Guzicki will work with the district’s volunteer webmaster, Rob van Herk, to reconcile the Rucker wait list with GATE student data van Herk has collected.
At Tuesday’s meeting, participants noticed at least two children who were supposed to be on the wait list were not shown in the district’s records. That realization sent the mother of one of the students out of the meeting on the verge of tears, parents at the meeting reported.
Guzicki said the spring semester pull-out program will be available on time and will be designed to have more cohesion with future courses.
“I do have to work with Jackie (Horejs) on the long-term planning of that. That’s not my expertise,” Guzicki said.
GATE Program dates: 2003
Meeting times: 7 to 9 p.m.
Jan. 21: Antonio Del Buono library
Feb. 11: District office board room
March 18: Antonio Del Buono library
April 15: District office board room
May 20: Antonio Del Buono library
