Gilroy
– Jaime Rosso wants it all for Gilroy schools.
While people may be hardwired to resist change, with
collaboration
– among teachers and the entire school community – the
challenges facing Gilroy Unified School District can be met
head-on, Rosso says.
Gilroy – Jaime Rosso wants it all for Gilroy schools.
While people may be hardwired to resist change, with collaboration – among teachers and the entire school community – the challenges facing Gilroy Unified School District can be met head-on, Rosso says.
“The expectation of higher collaboration helps the teachers become better teachers,” said Rosso, 52.
The district is trying to change the culture of teachers leading a class by themselves, Rosso said. These days, it’s all about collaboration, and Rosso thinks more collaboration among teachers makes it easier to reach all students.
The current school board president supports not only giving time for teacher collaboration, but also continuing to provide staff development for targeted instruction. He thinks Gilroy schools are on the track to improvement as long as they continue to reach students at all levels.
“Every teacher has the responsibility in their classroom to make sure that the student in their classroom’s needs are being met,” he said.
After one four-year term on the school board, Rosso, a 29-year Gilroy resident and parent of three GUSD graduates, says he’s gone through the new-trustee learning process and will help fulfill the Strategic Plan.
To achieve an optimum collaboration with the community, Rosso thinks the board and district need to tackle the challenge of communication.
“As much as possible, the district needs to provide opportunities to communicate with parents … at school sites,” Rosso said.
Administrators need to work through teachers to ensure parents are being engaged, Rosso said. But again, he wants to see parents and the community do their part to communicate in a collaborative way.
“I think there’s a difference between offering support and constructive criticism and just tearing down, or belittling,” Rosso said. “Our success or failure depends, in my opinion, on how well we collectively work to improve … including the students, the teachers, the community, … the staff, the unions, everybody’s got to have buy-in here.”
The rallying point should be test scores, which fell this year, although Rosso points out that the district has improved during his board tenure. This happened to be the year GUSD saw a natural slow-down, he said.
His greatest concern for the year is to better math scores, especially those of high school students. Rosso supports the release of a high school math teacher part-time to coach other teachers, and wants to increase supervision of the department.
Rosso points out that positive changes are being made at Gilroy High School that will help its efforts: Attendance, tardies and discipline have improved.
“I think that sets the stage for improving academic achievement,” Rosso said. “And also, the more students are engaged in activities – in other words, they’re participating – I think those are all measure of how we’re succeeding at the school.”
Language arts, reading and math should remain a high priority for the district, Rosso said, but he wants to do more to address the issue of too little time for PE, as well as science, history, art and music.
“I do get concerned about things like physical ed, music programs, the arts,” Rosso said. “But we act collectively as a board to make decisions and set priorities, and it’s hard when there are so many areas that need to be addressed that we need to have that focus.”
On the issue of using tests to measure student success, Rosso says it’s a necessary part of GUSD’s Accountability Plan.
“We’re making sure that the teachers have the data on each kid in their class and know where these kids are at so that they, in fact, can be accountable and responsible for those kids,” Rosso said. “So they know where their weaknesses are, and they know their strengths, and they know how to adjust instruction so that these kids are progressing.”
Rosso wants the Accountability Task Force to be a group that will effectively monitor that teachers and schools are using multiple measures to keep track of improvement, or lack thereof.
“We need an outside look in, with a critical eye to how we’re doing,” Rosso said. “Ultimately we are – the board – the accountability task force, we are the ones held accountable, but, again, the idea is that this group can work and focus on, what are the things that we need to look at.”
