Despite district’s advice, boundary change proposal amended by
school board after parents from the close-knit neighborhood
complained
Gilroy – Local residents learned that voices of dissent really can sway those in charge.
In response to pleads from a group of parents who complained that the district’s proposal to alter their attendance boundary would complicate their lives and break up the cohesiveness of their neighborhood, the Gilroy Unified School District voted 4-3 Monday night in favor of keeping the Sunrise Park neighborhood within the Luigi Aprea Elementary School borders.
If the board had approved the district’s original proposal, the homes on Hogan Way, which line the southside of the park, would have remained in the Luigi Aprea boundary while residents living kitty-corner on Saddler and Cheyenne drives and those on Sprig and Ohlone ways and other streets surrounding the park would have been moved to Rucker Elementary School territory.
The district amended the proposal after parents from the close-knit westside neighborhood showed up to a previous board meeting with neon-yellow “Sunrise Park Neighborhood” name tags affixed to their chests.
Although the Attendance Boundary Committee and district officials recommended that the board approve the original boundary changes and allow the siblings of children already attending El Roble, Luigi Aprea or Rod Kelley elementary schools to remain at the same site, they also presented the option of keeping the homes on the southside of Sunrise Park within Luigi’s borders.
Trustees Rhoda Bress, Tom Bundros, Javier Aguirre and Jim Rogers voted for the latter proposal while Trustees David McRae, Pat Midtgaard and Jaime Rosso voted against it.
The board also decided to allow children already attending El Roble and Rod Kelley elementary schools and their siblings to remain at those schools.
When the vote was finalized the parents broke out in applause. The dozen or so residents left the room with smiles on their faces and their muffled cheers could be heard from inside the board room as they mingled outside.
Bress, who made the motion to accept the proposal sans Sunrise, said after driving around the neighborhood she decided it made since to maintain the current boundaries.
“There are issues with the impact of this, but nothing could be bigger than losing the trust of parents,” she said. “If we’ve made a commitment to having neighborhood schools then the neighborhood belongs to Luigi.”
During public comment before the vote, many parents said they didn’t understand the rationale of sending children to school across Santa Teresa Boulevard and Monterey Road, when Luigi Aprea is mere blocks away.
Eliot Elementary School is the only site that won’t be effected by the reconfigured boundaries. Students residing off Murray Avenue, near Leavesley Road, will attend Rucker Elementary and kindergartners living in the area north of Mantelli Drive will attend ADB. Also, residents living in the area from Uvas Parkway to Orchard Drive and south of 10th Street will move from El Roble to Glen View.
Students who live in homes south of First Street in the boundaries of Luigi Aprea, Rod Kelley and ADB elementary schools will attend the new elementary school. The new school will replace Las Animas Elementary School and the boundaries have been redrawn so that Rod Kelley and ADB will absorb the current Las Animas students.
Las Animas students who will switch over to El Roble or ADB will be within walking distance of their new school.
Tina Eichenbaum said the group of parents never meant to put down any of the hard-working teachers or staff at Rucker by insisting that their children remain in Luigi territory.
“That’s not the issue in this situation,” said the mother of four. “The issue is what is just and what is fair. We chose to buy our home near the school we wanted to attend.”
Parents also pointed out that they conducted a door-to-door survey and discovered that only three children living in the 41 homes south of Sunrise Drive, will enter kindergarten in the fall.
But Midtgaard, a retired principal, said she has serious concerns about schools growing too large and explained that the remedy isn’t as simple as a few portables. It’s difficult for one principal to run a school of more than 800 students, there are more transportation issues and students won’t have as much access to services such as the library, she said.
The district estimates that Luigi Aprea will have more than 800 students in 2006 but that number will drop to about 740 in 2007 when the new school opens.
The district staged four meetings at various sites in the past couple weeks to give locals a chance to weigh in on the issue. A total of 115 community members attended the meetings.
