GILROY — Members of the Gilroy Teachers Association addressed a full room during the public comment section of the meeting when roughly 150 school district employees gathered to ask school board trustees to increase pay and benefits as part of negotiations for this year’s contract.
“Gilroy Unified School District is one of the lowest-paying districts in the County of Santa Clara,” Jonathan Bass, a South Valley Middle School sixth- grade teacher, said. “When teachers struggle to support themselves and families, the community suffers.”
Among the GTA members are nurses, speech therapists, physiologists and of course, teachers — essentially anyone with a specialty certificate. These district employees have not had a raise since 2007 and have also been asked to assume more of the costs of their benefits after Kaiser Permanente increased its rates and the district could not afford to pay the difference in costs, explained Bass.
GTA isn’t the only union in the district concerned about benefits and pay.
In the same meeting, BC Doyle and Lee Anne Gaxiola presented the initial California School Employees Association proposal for this school year, which also included concerns about benefits and pay. CSEA is the union that represents more than 210,000 classified school support staff throughout California, including school maintenance workers, cafeteria workers, librarians and teachers aids.
In other school news:
Choir petition delivered
Raquel Bonino – the president and treasurer of the Christopher High School Choir Booster Club and the mother of two CHS choir students – handed a petition with 1,050 signatures to school board trustees during the public comment section of the school board meeting.
“Our choir deserves nothing but the best venue. …’Adequate’ refers to mediocre or good enough,” said Bonino who referred to comments GUSD Superintendent Debbie Flores and school board trustees have made when they explained that choirs would not be performing in churches this year as adequate facilities already existed within the district.
Bonino asked school board trustees to consider letting the choir directors choose the performing venues instead of designating where the students could and couldn’t perform.
Physical fitness results are in
The results of the 2013 Physical Fitness Test are in and for fifth graders, the results aren’t pretty. Fifth-grade students performed at much lower levels than seventh and ninth-grade students, perhaps because middle and high school students have regular Physical Education classes.
“I think middle school and high school, where they are getting daily PE – it makes a big difference,” said Flores.
Less than a third of fifth-grade students met state fitness standards during the last three years of testing compared to less than 50 percent of seventh graders and almost 60 percent of ninth graders.
The test assesses body composition, cardiovascular endurance, abdominal strength, trunk extension strength, upper body strength and flexibility. The testing is not part of STAR testing, meaning that it will continue even after STAR testing is replaced by Common Core testing.
GHS bleacher update
In June GHS’ bleachers were deemed unusable, but repairs will soon be underway following the Thursday school board meeting.
The cost of the repairs will be $40,900 and will include replacing stairs, seats and treads, according to the GUSD agenda briefing.
“I think we’ve pretty much honed in on the immediate problems without tearing it apart and spending $2 million to redo it,” explained Anthony Palazzo of PMSM Architects, the company chosen to present a design proposal for the repairs.
While replacing the treads and stairs is necessary, replacing the seats is cosmetic and will be done only if money allows.
“Again, we’re trying to solve as many of the issues you have out there without breaking the bank and doing the best to make this safer and more accessible for folks in wheelchairs,” said Palazzo.
The district plans to open the repaired bleachers in April or May so that the district will be able to host track meets in the spring.
