Schools

Gilroy school board president Fred Tovar cited late boxing great Muhammad Ali in his speech to 433 of Christopher High School’s graduating seniors Tuesday night and urged them to take risks.

In mailers to thousands to Gilroy homes, in speeches, in endorsements by politicians and wealthy businessmen and on signs all around town, voters have been told that passage of the $170 million Measure E bond proposal on Tuesday’s ballot will ensure Gilroy kids get a good education by building modern schools with state-of-the-art technology.But a Dispatch review of school rankings and research data suggest the jury is still out on whether new facilities make a significant difference in some measures of academic standards.In Gilroy, school rankings appear inconsistent on the question and suggest that factors such as poverty play a bigger role than facilities when it comes to classroom achievement.Christopher High School, the district’s $158 million showcase, was built with 2008 bond money and non-voter approved $33 million in Certificates of Participation, repaid from the general fund. Its state academic ratings are high, 8 out of 10 compared to all California high schools and 7 among schools with similar demographics.But Gilroy High School, an old facility with some recent modernization, ranks at 4 among all high schools and 5 among similar schools in the state.Glen View Elementary School was completely remodeled last year with about $7 million from 2008’s $150 million Measure P, money still being repaid by taxpayers.Glen View in the past has lagged in test scores and in recent tests that pattern continues. The school ranked 4 on a scale of 1 to 10 compared to schools statewide.Compared to schools with similar demographics it ranked 3. And in terms of how it serves low-income students, who make up most of its student body, it also ranked at 3.Gilroy Prep School, the only charter school in the Gilroy Unified School District, ranked at 10 among California schools, 9 in how it helps low-income kids and 6 compared to similar schools.At GPS, technology of the kind Measure E would pay for helps students. Personal computers allow students to interact immediately with teachers, and allow teachers to monitor in real time whether students understand what’s being taught.When it opened in 2011, GPS was put in a collection of old portables at South Valley Junior High School. And while the school has since had some upgrades paid for by bond money, its scores from the beginning have been among the state’s highest.GUSD officials, including assistant superintendent Alvaro Mesa, have said comparisons with a charter school aren’t fair and that differences between schools such as Glen View and Gilroy Prep have more to do with the percentage of low-income students than facility conditions.GPS has always focused on low-income, underserved families, with school officials sometimes knocking on doors in low-income neighborhoods to recruit students.About 55 percent of GPS students are on a free and reduced cost lunch program, an indication of those families’ low-income.The figure at Glen View is a lot higher, Meza said.Asked to comment on whether spending millions on school facilities and really matters in classroom achievement, schools superintendent Debbie Flores issued this statement:“The district has not stated that Measure E is needed to improve education, but rather to help maintain the high-quality of education currently provided to all local students. If Measure E does not pass, additional monies from the general fund would need to go to shoring up our older facilities and ensuring they continue to meet safety standards for students. This would take needed funds away from educational programs. Also, the district believes that equitable facilities should be provided to all students.”In the newest Yes on E mailer, Gilroy businessman and Chamber of Commerce 2016 Man of the Year for 2016 Joel Goldsmith put it this way: “Nothing in our community is more important than educating our young people, and that is best done in modern facilities.”Mayor Perry Woodward wrote in the mailing that passage “will help sustain the high quality of education provided to our children and allow us to modernize and build facilities to better support instruction needs.”When it comes to Gilroy’s oldest—South Valley and Brownell—and its newest—Solorsano—middle schools there is almost no difference in their state rankings.Here’s now the rankings show up on greatschools.org, which tracks state school standings nationwide.Brownell and Solorsano ranked 7 and South Valley 6 when compared to all California middle schools.Compared to middle schools with similar demographics, Brownell outranked Solorsano, 7 to 6, and South Valley was at 5.Compared to how well the schools meet the needs of low-income students, Solorsano ranked 6 while the others had 5.At the California Policy Center, a think-tank that digs into school bonding, researcher and author Kevin Dayton said Tuesday, “I am not aware of any peer-reviewed study, or any study for that matter, that has proven that a bond measure and facilities improvement results in better test scores. To think that a new building is going to make children be better mathematicians or thinkers is absurd.”However, in a 2010 study the 21st Century School Foundation (at http://bit.ly/24jfAVL) in Washington D.C. found that “Recent research continues to point to a small but steadily positive relationship between the quality of a public school facility and a range of academic and community outcomes.”Among its cited research one study found that, “In schools with poor facilities, students attended less days on average and therefore had lower grades in English Language Arts and Math standardized tests. Attendance was found to be a full mediator for grades in ELA and a partial mediator for grades in math.”Another cited study found a “4-9 percent difference between students in schools in worst/best condition; 5-9 percent difference between students in oldest/newest schools; 4 percent difference in graduation rates between students in schools in worst/best condition and between students in oldest/newest schools.”Dayton is critical of the political processes behind school bond sales.“At every stage of the process, interests that will benefit from bond sales can take advantage of a system that favors passage of a bond measure,” he wrote in 2015. “Some issues of concern include use of public funds to develop campaigns to pass bond measures, significant political contributions to campaigns from interests likely to benefit from construction, involvement of college foundations as intermediaries for campaign contributions, and conflicts of interest and alleged pay-to-play contracts.”He went on, “Few Californians realize how much debt they’ve imposed on future generations with their votes for bond measures meant to fund the construction of new and modernized school facilities.“From 2001 to 2014, California voters considered 1147 ballot measures proposed by K-12 school districts and community college districts to borrow money for construction via bond sales. Voters approved 911 of these bond measures, giving 642 school and college districts authority to borrow a total of $110.4 billion.”Dayton’s study can be found here: http://bit.ly/1TY7qAC.In its latest round of campaign finance disclosures, the Yes on E group, Friends of GUSD Supporting Measure E, listed more contributions from companies outside Gilroy that do business with the school district.They include Val’s Plumbing & Heating of Salinas, $2,500; Total Securities Concepts Division of TSCS, Inc., of Prunedale, $2,500; and Palace Business Solutions of Santa Cruz, $500.Those are in addition to more than $30,000 in contributions already received from a half-dozen of the school district’s biggest contractors, some of whom have worked on previous bond projects, including the Seward L. Schreder Construction of Redding. That firm did more than $14 million in bond-related projects with GUSD from 2011 through 2015 and is Measure E’s biggest financial supporter at $10,000.In its campaign filing report, the pro-E committee listed spending of $2,107 for 400 yard signs and $5,753 to print and mail flyers to 10,000 Gilroy homes.It also lists a $2,279 reimbursed to Jaime Rosso for money he spent out of his own pocket for campaign literature, banners and sign lumber before the committee had its own account, he said. Rosso is the spokesperson for the committee and a longtime GUSD school board member.

If you want to make America great again, there’s something you can do right away: Vote yes on Measure E and support Gilroy’s schools.With one swoop of your pen and a serious commitment of $60 for every $100,000 of property you own, you can build a new elementary school and fix up degrading middle schools. You can keep all of the district’s schools top notch, which is what we think makes America and our community great.For some reasons that make no sense to us, schools, teachers and taxes have become anathema in this country over the past 40 years. Everyone wants the best services but no one wants to pay for them.If you go back to a time a lot of people think America was great (and we think it’s still great, by the way), you might try the 1950s and 1960s when tax rates, particularly on the rich, were double and triple what they are now. Under Dwight D. Eisenhower, the rich paid 91 percent of their income. Under Richard M. Nixon, it was down to 77 percent. But then it kept dropping as rich people gained more power and convinced a large number of Americans that taxes were bad, particularly taxes on the rich. Back then, people didn’t mind the taxes as much because they knew they were making America great. They were proud of their country and still incredibly rich, despite the taxes.The earlier tax rates afforded us immeasurable greatness. We built a transcontinental highway system. We built the biggest buildings in the world. We went to the moon. We built great schools and free public university systems.But now schools have to raise money by holding their hats out like beggars. What’s happened to this country, where no one asks us to vote to spend trillions on wars both parties later realize were mistakes, but we act like the schools are criminals for wanting to give teachers a living wage and give kids modern buildings and educational systems?How do so many people--some of them wealthier people who send their children to private schools-- figure taxes to help schools are a bad thing? There are exceptions, like Don Christopher, a businessman who puts his funds where his heart is.  We aren’t saying the schools and their administrators are perfect. We’ve spent plenty of time dissecting their faults, poring over every document. We aren’t happy about some of the lack of transparency we’ve seen. We don’t like that they don’t live-stream school board meetings. We don’t like how they rushed this election without time to make a stronger case and can’t  or won’t even name who solicited the highest donations. The list of projects the money will be spent on is not detailed enough. We question some of the ties between contractors and the board. We don’t like the fact that Christopher High School came in so over budget that its promised theater was never built, the track and field needed private funding to be completed and seven years after the building was finished, it needs repairs.But after putting them through the investigative wringer, we see no reason not to put up another $170 million to keep our schools on the cutting edge. (For comparison’s sake, the Iraq War cost $720 million a day.) The bottom line is that we have to support our schools, whatever it takes. To do anything less is criminal. It’s the opposite of making America great.In Finland and China teachers are as valued as doctors and CEOs. Those countries haven’t forgotten the value of great education. Rather than criticizing teachers unions we’d like to see the schools pay the way private companies do. That would guarantee the best and the brightest get the jobs and hold them.If  you want to look at just the bottom line: this isn’t so much a tax as it is an investment. Nothing will make property value go up more than a great school system. Gilroy homes are already a bargain in Silicon Valley. Add more school buildings like Christopher High and more programs like Gilroy High’s biomedical training, and watch the values increase far more than the taxes.

More than 90 percent of the $37,696 in the Yes on Measure E campaign chest is from outside Gilroy—most from firms, including one in New York, whose business with the school district exceeds $33 million just since 2011.

At this time, we’re housing our children in school buildings where their own parents attended classes 30 or 40 years ago. The average age of schools in the Gilroy Unified School District is 30 years old and five schools are more than 50 years old. The District has taken great care of the schools but they need to be renovated and rebuilt.

Gilroy’s loss will be Berkeley’s gain, as all three of the city’s valedictorians intend to attend Cal in the fall.

Gilroy celebrated the spring installment of Bike to Work/School Day on May 14, the day when local commuters are asked to leave the car at home and find an alternative means of transit.Nearly 40 percent of Bay Area commuters live within five miles of their workplace, according to the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, which is holding bike-centric events throughout the region in May.The group states this is a manageable distance for even the most novice cyclists, but in Gilroy, where just 20 percent of residents work within city limits, the challenge to substitute the car or truck for a bike is obviously greater than tech workers living in the crux of Silicon Valley.This is where local advocates, city staff and innovative school initiatives have stepped in.At Las Animas Elementary School, where parents must contend with a neighborhood in flux as construction crews work all around the school, the administration has embraced a simple, but innovative program that aims to minimize traffic congestion during morning drop-off, while promoting healthy lifestyles.“When you have private taxis dropping off students in the morning, you have an issue with traffic,” said Las Animas school principal, Sylvia Reyes.The answer: a pilot program where once a month parent volunteers lead a “walking school bus” and walk a group of students the final few blocks to school. For the older kids, a “bicycle train” follows the same concept, this time with bikes.Reyes said the program, which started in October, has been a great success.“Our parents our wonderful,” said Reyes. “The program builds awareness and excitement and the early morning physical activity help with students’ concentration and energy levels.”The school also hosts family nights where kids can learn about bike maintenance and get their bikes fixed for free. And for the class that has the most students participate in the monthly bike or walk to school activity, they get an award at the end of the year.“The students get little treats so they notice that we are noticing,” said Reyes, adding that the school and program partners hope to extend the program to more days in the month.“We have noticed a decline of traffic and congestion on those Wednesdays when the program runs,” she said. “Our parents and volunteers have done a fantastic job supporting our students in getting healthy.”To ensure students are safe on their journey to school, city public works staff meet regularly with school district officials to assess the infrastructure needs of city schools, according to city Traffic and Transportation Engineering Manager, Henry Servin. Public works also meets with the school board four times a year.At the start of each school year, Servin says, city staff reviews bell times and walking routes to schools and addresses requests for crosswalks, signage or any other necessary structure.Servin is also the staff liaison for the city’s five-member pedestrian and bicycle safety commission, which works to promote bicycle safety in the city.The commission hosts “bicycle rodeos” in collaboration with the Gilroy Police Department, where attendees learn the rules of the road and can get some free bike-centric treats in the process. At one of the rodeos, kids got a free bike helmet.The commission also secured donations for critical signage along 6th street.Servin says “share the road” signage or street markings are effective tools in bicycle safety.“When motorists see designated bike lanes or “sharrows” (street markings) - any indicator that reminds them to share the road - they tend to drive safer, go slower and accident rates go down,” he said.“A little investment in paint and signs go a long way,” he said.Servin said the city is serious about making it easier for residents to walk or ride their bike in Gilroy.“It has been the expression of the city council and residents that they want more bike lanes and we are working to provide that,” he said, adding that the city’s general plan has a bicycle and pedestrian master plan.“Gilroy considers all residents needs - pedestrians and cyclists,” said Servin. “We are a very recreation-oriented community with over seven miles of bike trails and plans for 22 miles.”Getting commuters out of their cars for the daily slog, may be more of a challenge.Just 277 people in Gilroy get on a CalTrain daily to work or school, and of those, just over 30 regularly bike to the station, according to Servin.This is in addition to commuters using the VTA Express bus routes or private bus services from the likes of Google or Yahoo!“We are hoping that will increase,” he said.

Of the seven Gilroy school board trustees, Patricia Midtgaard has perhaps the finest of lines to walk when it comes to Measure E, the $170 million school bond proposal on the June 7 ballot.

Gilroy school campuses will soon have heart defibrillators to assist when a child or adult has a heart failure and quick action can save a life.Thirty automatic external defibrillators (AED) will be placed in schools and other district facilities and staff will be trained in their use, the Gilroy Unified School District announced Monday.GUSD partnered with the Gilroy Fire Department for the AED program, part of a City of Gilroy effort aimed at becoming a HEARTSafe community, according to GUSD spokeswoman Rachel Zlotziver.Sudden cardiac arrest occurs in about 6,000 children per year in the United States. Of those, 750 happen during sports activities, according to Zlotziver. Survival depends on early recognition, early CPR and early defibrillation. For every minute defibrillation is delayed, the odds of survival decrease by 10 percent, she said in a GUSD press release.“HEARTSafe is a public health initiative intended to help more people survive after sudden out-of-hospital cardiac arrest,” Zlotziver said.“When someone’s heart suddenly stops, they will generally not survive unless a number of interventions take place immediately, including CPR and defibrillation. As part of the HEARTSafe community program, the city is working to place AEDs in multiple locations throughout the community, including school sites, with a goal of having one AED per every thousand residents,” she added.The district ordered the AEDs and expects they will be installed in facilities over the summer, according to Zlotziver. Staff training will happen during the first three weeks of August, she said.At the GFD, Jim Wyatt of the Emergency Medical Services Division said that, nationally, the survival rate for those who suffer cardiac arrest outside a hospital setting is “a dismal” six percent.“Our goal is to change this rate by becoming a HEARTSafe Community through public awareness and education, lay person CPR and AED training, encouraging and partnering with our local business and nonprofit community to obtain AEDs, and working with our local hospitals and County EMS agency to provide the best pre-hospital delivery possible,” he said.Nationally, AEDs used by lay people make a big difference, according to statistics provided by Wyatt, including the following:Chances of survival increase nearly three times if a bystander uses an AED.  Communities with comprehensive AED programs that include CPR and AED training for lay rescuers have achieved survival rates of nearly 40 percent.GUSD will purchase 30 defibrillators that are compatible with fire department EKG monitors. GFD staff will help place the machines, start the program and provide training and annual refresher courses to staff, according to Zlotziver.“I am very excited about this partnership,” said schools Superintendent Debbie Flores. “While at one time AEDs were extremely cumbersome and difficult for school staff to operate, technology has advanced to the point where the equipment now available to us is easy to use, automatically diagnosing the heart rhythm and determining if a shock is needed. Employing these new AEDs on our campuses will enable staff to respond quickly if a child or adult is experiencing sudden cardiac arrest,” she said.One AED will be placed at each elementary school, two at each middle school and three at each comprehensive high school, including to athletic staffs. They also will be put in the district office and at other GUSD sites, according to Zlotziver.