Retaining quality staff members, performing curriculum audits
and planning for growth are among the top priorities for the
district, trustees said.
Gilroy – Retaining quality staff members, performing curriculum audits and planning for growth are among the top priorities for the district, trustees said.
The Gilroy Unified School District board of trustees ranked goals and objectives for the coming academic year and future years, and presented them at a Sept. 6 board meeting. The list contained objectives from various categories, such as human resources and facilities, but did not outline how soon the goals should be accomplished.
“We need to have a discussion about short-term, long-term,” trustee Rhoda Bress said.
The top-ranked objective, to perform curriculum and program audits at all schools, is scheduled to take place during the next two months, assistant superintendent of educational services Basha Millhollen said. This audit will allow schools to identify strong and weak points of instruction.
However, the next four objectives do not yet have timelines associated with them. They are to develop plans to attract and retain teachers, enforce student discipline, adapt to enrollment growth and address Christopher High School’s $14 million funding gap.
Trustee Jaime Rosso expressed concern that a goal of addressing the achievement gap – or the testing disparity among ethnic groups – was not in the list of 15 top goals. Trustees said they assumed the achievement gap would be closed if the 15 listed objectives were accomplished.
Trustees could use the list and Superintendent Deborah Flores’ achievement of them to evaluate her. However, trustees expressed hesitancy because they thought the objectives list was too broad to be used for evaluation.
“I understand how this could fold into the superintendent evaluation,” trustee Pat Midtgaard said. But “I don’t want to put too much on the plate.”
“There’s a lot of objectives for the superintendent to be evaluated for the first year,” trustee Javier Aguirre said.
A majority of trustees commented that the list was too long, even for their own planning purposes. To this end, trustees decided to pass the list to Flores so she could condense it into four or five categories of goals that encompass many of the objectives listed.
Flores will then bring the condensed list back to trustees at a board meeting. The condensed list will not have any less goals, but should be in a form that will help guide decisions for the coming year, trustees said.
“I think we need to be a little more focused,” trustee Denise Apuzzo said. “Short-term versus long-term is critical here. We don’t even have an entire school year to implement some of these ideas.”
