Schools

It’s lunchtime at a Gilroy high school campus and the music is blaring in the quad. Students are mingling with friends in the lunch line and eating pizza and fries at the lunch tables. It’s a snapshot of an ordinary high school; but looking deeper, one can see it’s anything but. Beyond the boundaries appear buildings that are home to a larger campus and older students: Gavilan Community College.

What are your plans after high school?

Classified staff including bus drivers and yard duties for the Gilroy Unified School District aren’t happy that management employees have already inked a unanimously approved, across-the-board 4.5 percent salary increase, while the some of the “lowest-paid” GUSD employees are still working for the same wages they made six years ago.

Eighth graders in Lindsey Pope's math class at South Valley

As superintendent Debbie Flores put it, Gov. Jerry Brown's

Gilroy’s school board in the mid-1950s was relieved when they received a bid that was within their budget to replace the seismically unsound high school near downtown. The bid was for $467,000, the only one under the budget of roughly $500,000, according to history compiled...