Thursday meeting jam-packed with items
Gilroy – Superintendent Edwin Diaz will discuss the changes and policies that have been implemented in response to last year’s Day of Silence during Thursday’s board meeting.
Diaz said the report, which Gilroy Unified School District President Pat Midtgaard requested at the last meeting, will show that the district has been dealing with the controversy that arose when four teachers participated in the Day of Silence last April.
“Contrary to public opinion we’ve been working on this for a year,” he said.
Last year, about four Gilroy High School teachers participated in the April 26 nationwide event, a speechless protest intended to symbolize the discrimination gays and lesbians experience. Critics of the Day of Silence want the board to enact a policy that would require teachers to talk, and in essence ban participation.
Some board members, including Jim Rogers and Tom Bundros, have said they would support such a policy, which the board still has time to enact.
The GHS bell schedule, another hotly debated issue, is also on the board agenda. The Bell Schedule Committee, a group of parents, district officials, students and community members who spent six months reviewing other high school schedules, presented their recommendation to the board at a special meeting recently.
The schedule recommended by the committee was a hybrid block that would require students to attend six, hour-long classes Monday through Wednesday and three 100-minute classes on Thursdays and Fridays. But the recommendation didn’t receive a “high degree of consensus when presented to the staff as a whole,” according to the GUSD board agenda.
Per Principal James Maxwell’s request, the district decided that GHS staff need to come to an agreement on a schedule that addresses the too-long two-hour blocks and the necessity for students to attend some classes everyday.
The new schedule should be ready for board approval at the May 18 meeting.
The board also will be asked to give Dilbeck and Sons the authorization to build the new elementary school. The Salinas-based architecture firm – the same company building the GHS student center that’s currently under construction – quoted a bid of $11,593,000 for the new southwest school.
The board also will be asked to approve the construction of a new special education four-plex on the campus of Brownell Middle School.
Board Meeting
– What: GUSD Board Meeting
– When: Thursday, 7:30pm
– Where: District offices, 7810 Arroyo Circle
