Gilroy
– Gilroy High School cheerleading team can go to its annual
summer camp. It can earn high marks and a chance to perform at the
next football all-star game in Hawaii. But that is where it ends.
The team will not go to the 2008 Pro Bowl, said high school
Principal James Maxwell.
Gilroy – Gilroy High School cheerleading team can go to its annual summer camp. It can earn high marks and a chance to perform at the next football all-star game in Hawaii. But that is where it ends. The team will not go to the 2008 Pro Bowl, said high school Principal James Maxwell.
Preempting any protest from parents, coaches and cheerleaders – as occurred last year when the Gilroy Unified School District board of trustees originally denied the team a chance to perform at the Pro Bowl – Maxwell took the initiative this year and instructed cheerleading coaches Shirley Nunes and Jeanne Baumgartner on multiple occasions, including earlier this month, that he would not approve a field trip in 2008.
“They’re very clear,” he said. “They are very clear that the girls are not going to Hawaii.”
The trip to perform during halftime at the Pro Bowl – the all-star game of the National Football League – requires team members to miss three consective school days.
“It is about my following board policy,” Maxwell said. “For a nonacademic field trip, anything over two full days is excessive.”
Maxwell originally approved the three-day absence for the 2007 field trip last August, but then rescinded his approval in September, because he believed the trip demanded an excessive loss of class time.
The board supported his assertion last September, voting 5-2 against the cheerleaders’ trip – a tradition since the 1980s. However – in the face of petitioning parents, coaches and students packing the board room, decked in leis and delivering tearful speeches – the board decided to bring the issue up for another vote. At a special October meeting, the board voted 4-3 to allow the cheerleaders to perform. Voting against the trip were trustees Rhoda Bress, Tom Bundros and Pat Midtgaard. Former trustees David McRae and Jim Rogers reaffirmed their yes votes while trustees Javier Aguirre and Jaime Rosso switched their votes, citing that cheerleaders had entered the school year with the expectation that they would go on this trip.
In the wake of the controversy, the board sought to define how many missed school days – and whether they had to be contiguous – was excessive. However, the issue was sidelined by the departure of former superintendent Edwin Diaz and the resulting search for a new superintendent.
Just because the issue has been ignored does not mean the wounds have healed. While Nunes has accepted Maxwell’s mandate, she does not like it.
“It wasn’t my choice,” she said. “Frankly I don’t see (the trip as) detrimental to the students, particularly the caliber of the students that we have. I don’t think that missing three days of school is going to hurt them.”
Nunes and supporters of the cheerleaders often touted the academic achievements of team members. The board’s initial denial led to the opinion, which supporters still espouse, that the board would have interpreted the field trip policy differently if it had not centered around the cheerleading team.
“A lot of times people don’t value the act of the cheerleader as they would somebody in band or somebody who’s in a speech competition,” said Nunes. “Regardless, you’re missing school.”
There was no discrimination against cheerleaders, but there was the judgment that the trip was not focused on academics, said Bundros, the board president.
“Basically, the policy differentiated between two different types of field trips,” he said. “Field trips that are aligned with the curriculum, they receive one type of treatment and then field trips that aren’t aligned with the curriculum, and they receive a different type of treatment.”
Now that this policy is public knowledge, there will be no more exceptions, said Rosso.
“What happened is there was some fuzziness last time around and some misunderstanding as to what the expectation was,” he said. “This time, the expectation is clearly defined. As it stands right now, I support the recommendation of the principal.”
Ambiguity remains regarding how many consecutive days is excessive, said Bundros. Questions also remain about whether athletic teams, which can miss more than three nonconsecutive days, should be reined in. However, the board does not have the resources to resolve the issue.
“Nobody’s got the bandwidth right now to revisit the policy,” he said. “There’s some time-sensitive issues on our plate right now, which are going to keep us occupied for quite a while.”
These issues include the ongoing superintendent search, the development of a plan for the new high school and the revision of elementary school boundaries, he said.
Cheerleaders were understanding when told they would not perform at the Pro Bowl in 2008.
“I kind of figured that,” said sophomore Ashley Fellows, citing that the board implied February’s trip was an exception.
However, the varsity cheerleader could not help but become sentimental about the experience of performing in front of more than 50,000 football fans.
“That’s something we work for at cheer camp,” she said. “For the girls that don’t get to go, they’re going to miss out on a lot.”
