GILROY
– Minor changes in the school district’s elementary school
enrollment boundaries have been felt in a major way, by Sunrise
Drive families west of Kite Drive who live in odd numbered
homes.
GILROY – Minor changes in the school district’s elementary school enrollment boundaries have been felt in a major way, by Sunrise Drive families west of Kite Drive who live in odd numbered homes.
One week after trustees approved a plan slightly revising how Gilroy children are cast into elementary schools, staff was sent back to the drawing board. This time, staff was charged with drawing up a plan for the northwest area of town that would not cause families living across the street from one another to go to different schools.
At last week’s regular school board meeting, a parent of a future kindergartner whose neighborhood friends attend Luigi Aprea Elementary lambasted the district for revisions to its neighborhood schools policy. Under the plan that had been approved, Antoinette Price’s children would have attended a different school from the kids in even-numbered houses who live across the street.
Price presented a petition from neighbors demanding the school district re-tweak revisions to its elementary school attendance areas. Price wanted her children, and about three other Sunrise Drive students affected by the change, to be allowed to enter Luigi Aprea – Gilroy Unified School District’s highest performing school.
“You are segregating this neighborhood by dividing the attendance area right down the middle of our street,” Price said. “My child plays with our neighbors’ kids, we break bread with these families, but because we live in an odd numbered house, our children won’t go to school together. Is that fair?”
District staff was able to accommodate Price, announcing Wednesday that the neighborhood west of Kite Drive would be placed in the Luigi Aprea boundaries.
“We just have to hope there isn’t any capacity issues as a result,” said Juanita Contin, the district’s director of student enrollment. “Our consultant told us if we divide Sunrise down the middle we would meet capacity at Luigi (by sending residents north of the boundary to Rucker Elementary School). If we included that whole area, we’d be dealing with an unknown.”
Last year, an higher than normal amount of kindergartners enrolled at Luigi Aprea, sending the overflow to nearby Rod Kelley Elementary School.
“Hopefully that high enrollment was just a bubble, but there are a lot of young families moving into the area,” Contin said.
The picture will get clearer March 1, as parents of kindergartners register their students that day. If an excessive amount of children enroll at Luigi Aprea, the school may have to open a seventh kindergarten class or send children to another school.
Because district middle schools will also use a neighborhood schools policy next year, residents of west of Kite Drive and north of Sunrise will attend Brownell Middle School when they graduate into junior high. Previously, students in that area were slated for enrollment in Ascencion Solorsano – the district’s newest middle school set to open in August.
