Board will listen to presentation on exam and proposed changes
during Thursday’s meeting
Gilroy – Thursday’s agenda appears concise but it’s actually packed with some controversial items that are bound to produce at least a few contentious comments from the public.
Gilroy Unified School District Superintendent Edwin Diaz said he expects a group of parents who live near Sunrise Drive to show up and speak out about the district’s plans to redraw school boundaries for the 2007 school year.
Residents living near or on Sunrise Drive currently attend Luigi Aprea Elementary School. Under GUSD’s proposal, those students would now live within the Rucker Elementary School boundaries.
District officials say that school borders must be altered to accommodate the new school which is set to open in 2007 and to deal with the onslaught of residential development in southwest Gilroy, but Frederick Ziemann thinks an ulterior motive is at work.
Ziemann said GUSD’s maps showing the current boundary and the proposed changes, which were printed in the Dispatch, exposes the district’s covertness because they were confusing and did not show street names.
“If you got that from them I think they’re rotten,” he said.
Ziemann, whose wife is a teacher within the district, said the new boundaries are being redrawn to help boost the district’s standardized test scores. Luigi Aprea, which is located in an affluent area of Gilroy, was the only school that hit and exceeded the statewide target of 800 on the 2004-2005 Academic Performance Index.
Board President Pat Midtgaard said the main reason the borders need to be adjusted is because some elementary schools are over crowded and others have room.
The Attendance Area Committee, which is comprised of parents and district employees, will present the proposed boundary changes at Thursday’s meeting.
The board will also listen to a report on the California High School Exit Exam from Assistant Superintendent Jacki Horejs. Horejs will present the most recent of the district’s CAHSEE statistics such as how many seniors still need to pass the test, the average scores and how many times they’ve taken it.
The class of 2006 is the first group required to pass the exit exam. Although the state has made it clear that students who don’t pass the CAHSEE won’t earn a diploma, it’s up to local school boards to decide if the teens can participate in graduation ceremonies and/or earn a certificate of completion.
The board will make a decision at the Feb. 13 meeting.
At Thursday’s meeting the board is only expected to vote on two items: approval of the Early High School Implementation grant at Gavilan College and extension of Las Animas Elementary School’s dual immersion program.
The dual immersion program, which Assistant Superintendent Jacki Horejs said should not be confused with bilingual education, was first implemented at Las Animas during the 2000-2001 school year.
Unlike bilingual education, the goal of the dual immersion program is for students to become fluent and literate in both languages, Horejs said.
The 200 or so Las Animas students participating in the program are taught the same content in both English and Spanish, she said. About half of the students are English-only speakers and the other half are Spanish-speakers.
The district wants to extend the dual immersion program to South Valley Middle School, Las Animas’ feeder school.
“We feel that because it’s been successful it’s something we would like to extend to the middle school,” Horejs said.
Meeting
– What: School board meeting
– When: 7:30pm Thursday
– Where: District Office, 7810 Arroyo Circle
