Morgan Hill Unified School District Superintendent Alan Nishino
has chastised Ann Sobrato High School students for not keeping
their campus cleaner.
Morgan Hill Unified School District Superintendent Alan Nishino has chastised Ann Sobrato High School students for not keeping their campus cleaner.
And one student has taken offense with the comments the local school chief made during the Oct. 7 assembly, which was supposed to commend hundreds of students who made the honor roll last semester.
“The manner and timing was inappropriate,” Sobrato junior Franchesca Kellett said during Tuesday’s MHUSD Trustee meeting.
Nishino, however, said he meant to motivate the students, not deflate them.
He said he took the assembly as a chance to appeal to Sobrato’s best and brightest to set the example in keeping the campus clean.
“Everybody that knows me knows that academic achievement is very important to me,” he said. “The intent was that these kids are the best kids and the leaders. They can help people do a better job.”
Kellett said the problem was that academic achievement was what the assembly was all about.
Hundreds of parents attended, too, to cheer their high-achieving students but instead Nishino reprimanded them for the litter problem at the school, the student said.
Nishino said he didn’t mean to offend anyone.
The lecture stemmed from the Superintendent’s Challenge, which Nishino implemented at the beginning of the school year to get students at Sobrato and Live Oak high schools jazzed about keeping their campuses clean.
At the end of the year, students from the cleaner school will win a prize.
“We took it as an insult on our character,” Kellett said of Nishino’s statements. “Overall, the students were let down.”
So, too, were the parents, said Franchesca’s mom, Lisa Kellett.
“The biggest thing we remember was him saying that as parents we failed our children,” she said. “At that point I stopped listening.”
Nishino said he didn’t say the parents failed.
Kellett said she’s trying to track down video from the assembly, to make sure she heard what she thinks she heard because she still can’t believe what she considers were offensive words by Nishino.
Nishino said his challenge is not a direct result of the 10 custodians that were laid off after $3 million was cut from the district budget over the summer.
Franchesca Kellett said Nishino shouldn’t capitalize on the rivalry between the two schools by creating more competition.
Nishino said competition is healthy.
“It’s there,” Nishino said. “Competition is what we do in America. So what you have to do is make sure it’s a clean, healthy rivalry, something productive and not demeaning.”
