GILROY
– Gilroy’s charter high school, plagued by troubles throughout
its three-year history, is looking for a better start this school
year with a new freshman class and a more focused charter.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – Gilroy’s charter high school, plagued by troubles throughout its three-year history, is looking for a better start this school year with a new freshman class and a more focused charter.
El Portal Leadership Academy – praised by Gilroy Unified School District this spring for making a turnaround – plans to continue that trend by sticking to its charter. Revised two years ago, the school’s charter is to provide a personalized education and graduate students capable of passing the California High School Exit Exam.
“I think they’ve made a lot of progress in solidifying their program and improving their staff,” said School Board Trustee Jaime Rosso, who is the district liaison for El Portal. “I’m very hopeful that all their students will continue to show progress and improvement in their schoolwork.”
The incoming freshman class of 60 students is only the second to enter the school. GUSD school board members prevented the school from admitting a freshman class last year following inadequate academic performance, high teacher turnover and a highly controversial sex-education class that discussed HIV and same-sex partners.
El Portal’s parent organization, the Mexican-American Community Services Agency (MACSA), revised the school’s charter during its first year of operation because most of the students were English learners who performed below grade level and were unable to make the kind of progress the school predicted.
“It was to set more realistic goals,” said Ernie Olivares, a member of El Portal’s local advisory board. “These kids have a lot of work ahead of them, and we need to find a way for them to believe in themselves.”
The school had sought to graduate students at a level of preparedness to enter the University of California or California State University systems. Now, Olivares said, the focus is toward producing capable high school graduates who can pass the exit exam, while still promoting the charter school’s goal of readying students for college.
Some improvement in student performance can be seen in standardized test results for the school between 2002 and 2003. On the math portion of the Measure of Academic Progress last school year, 8 percent of El Portal’s 10th-graders performed at the 10th-grade level while none did in 2001-02. Ten percent performed at the ninth-grade level last year, while only 3 percent did the previous year.
The freshman class of 60 students includes children from both South Valley Middle School and Brownell Academy who would have attended Gilroy High School. That number may grow slightly before school starts Aug. 25, because some students are still considering the school, according to Principal Noemi Garcia Reyes. The school has capacity for 80 students per grade level.
To fulfill the goal of graduating students capable of passing the exit exam or applying to college, El Portal added academic enhancement programs in literacy and math to bring students’ skills in those areas up to par.Both incoming freshmen and this year’s juniors are enrolled in summer courses, including the academic enhancement classes. They are currently finishing up the last week of a four-week program.
El Portal requires all freshmen to attend the “summer bridge program” to fully prepare them for high school.
“Students take core curriculum classes, such as math, social studies and English,” Reyes said. “They also get to know each other and the teachers.”
The school also provides this year’s freshmen with courses on specific study skills they will need during high school, such as note taking, summarizing and how to develop a thesis, Reyes said.
Of this year’s 80 juniors, 77 are enrolled in summer courses. Students must attend summer school if they passed a class with any grade below a C. Those who did not pass either the English-language or math sections of the exit exam must take the academic enhancement courses in those areas. A few students are attending summer courses simply because they chose to do so, Reyes said.
Returning students were happy to attend summer courses and improve in their particular areas.
Junior Vedani Escudero took a math enhancement class, because she failed that portion of the exit exam, and history. She has attended El Portal since her freshman year. She told her father she did not want to attend Gilroy High School because she cannot learn in a place with too much noise and too many people around.
The idea of having no more than 80 students in her grade level appealed to Escudero, who is thankful for the one-on-one attention she receives at the school.
“We are like a family,” she said.
