The school district is investing more than $7,000 to help
struggling students at the district’s lowest-scoring school, where
nearly seven in 10 kids are still learning English.
Gilroy – The school district is investing more than $7,000 to help struggling students at the district’s lowest-scoring school, where nearly seven in 10 kids are still learning English.
The Gilroy Unified School District board of trustees unanimously approved two pilot programs at Eliot Elementary School aimed at raising English learners’ achievement.
District educators hope the programs – Saxon Math and the SRA/McGraw Hill Reach Program for English – will bring students that are at least two years behind their age group up to grade level.
If students are “two or more years below grade level, we have to do something extraordinary for these children,” assistant superintendent of educational services Basha Millhollen said at the Thursday board meeting when the programs were approved.
Struggling fourth- and fifth-graders at the school will have the programs during the class time in which they would normally have English or math, she said. As students begin to achieve at or above grade level, they will be transferred back into the regular sections.
Eliot has the district’s highest percentage of English learners in the district with 67 percent. The school was also the lowest-scoring school in the district on a state index released at the end of August.
Several fourth- and fifth-grade teachers and specialists have been or will be trained in the courses, Millhollen said.
