GILROY
– A report critical of the high school’s English curriculum was
presented to school board trustees by a grassroots parents’ group,
identifying nine issues that need immediate board action.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – A report critical of the high school’s English curriculum was presented to school board trustees by a grassroots parents’ group, identifying nine issues that need immediate board action.
The report, which fills a three-ring binder, focuses largely on issues within Gilroy High School and the English Department, including the core reading list, the Honors Program and developing a reading program. “Position Paper: Report and Recommendations” was written by parents, teachers and community members involved with The Alliance for Academic Excellence.
“We just really wanted to clarify our position,” said Rhoda Bress, a GHS parent and Alliance member who helped distribute the paper to trustees earlier this month.
The Alliance decided to lay all its issues and concerns out on the table after pushing for revisions to the GHS reading list and observing what they said was an ineffective review process last fall.
“The issue just got so complicated, and before you know it, we were talking about major philosophical issues in education, we were talking about more than just a reading list,” Bress said. “I just think we began going into a lot of areas that were the board’s responsibility.”
Superintendent Edwin Diaz said the information provided in the report will be used.
“After briefly reviewing some of the recommendations, I think the recommendations are things that can be implemented,” he said, “and are things that, from a school perspective and from a community perspective, are things we want.”
The Alliance hopes trustees will use the paper as a tool in their current process of reviewing various board policies and when making decisions in the future, Bress said.
“We thought that we had done a lot of research and (put) a lot of thought in this, and … we felt that this hopefully would help them,” she said.
In a study session last Wednesday, trustees reviewed several board policies, one of which related to the selection and evaluation of instructional materials, a policy central to the reading list debate. Trustees did not discuss the paper during the session but might this Wednesday, when several more policies are discussed, including controversial issues and curriculum development and evaluation.
“We are incorporating it and will continue talking about it as we’re slogging through the board policies and also the administrative regulations,” said Tom Bundros, school board member and former Alliance parent.
While Alliance members hoped the paper would be put on a school board agenda so trustees could discuss it publicly and in depth, Diaz said the Alliance can elaborate on it during public communication at Wednesday’s study session. He also said he plans to meet with some Alliance members and trustees to further discuss the paper.
In the paper, one-page descriptions identify each of the nine issues Alliance members think the board should address. Many of the descriptions reference books and articles researched by the Alliance and direct the reader to some of the paper’s eight appendices.
A recommendation to the board also accompanies each issue.
“I think it took a lot of time and effort to put together such a complete document,” Diaz said.
“I think it’s more long-term than just this curriculum thing,” said Trustee Jim Rogers, referring to the board’s review of its policies.
Bress said trustees and district officials have the option of reproducing the paper for staff in order to get feedback, although the recommendations are directed specifically to them.
“We really feel this is the board’s job,” Bress said. “It makes it very clear the National School Board Association, as well as the California School Board Association, think that the most important job, the highest priority for the school board has to be student performance and academic achievement.”
In discussing the issue of parental involvement in the curriculum process, the Alliance notes that the school board has identified parent involvement as a top priority. The Alliance goes on to tell trustees that, when they have challenged the status quo, they have been met with “suspicion and even hostility,” providing examples of times when they received negative responses.
The Alliance recommends that parents be allowed to participate in the curriculum process through “forums, surveys, and other means and that their advocacy on behalf of their students is accepted as important and necessary.” The Alliance also recommends that the district’s recently adopted customer service guidelines apply to all parents and community members.
Included in the appendix is a “minority report” from the Reading Literature Advisory Group, which last fall established a list of criteria for developing a core reading list. After the group’s meetings raised questions about the process for revising the book list, the Alliance asked board members to disband the group of teachers, parents and students in favor. In the report, two advisory group members, English teacher Jane Singleton and parent Rhona Chan, outline a point system for weighting criteria and creating a “scientific” process for selecting texts.
The paper also includes an introduction to the Alliance, a group founded in 1996 to promote academic excellence at GHS for students at all levels. It also provides an explanation for the Alliance’s particular interest in the GHS English program.
“No matter what a student’s plans are after high school graduation or what academic major a student focuses on in college, communication skills are critical for success,” the paper reads. “For those students who plan to attend college, recent trends in education acknowledge the gap between what university professors expect newly enrolled students to know and what is actually being taught in high school.”
Also, when Alliance members attended the English Department’s presentation of the core reading list to the school board last spring, they instead heard students defend the controversial books on the list.
A score of Alliance members directly contributed to the paper, which passed muster with numerous other members, Bress said.
“This was an enormous effort, and it was all of us,” Bress said.
She said certain opinions and philosophies have at times been incorrectly attributed to the group by people who have not heard its positions.
