Just as the first of five Gilroy parents was preparing to
address the school board trustees with remarks highlighting
deficiencies in the English program at Gilroy High School, English
department chair Peter Gray walked out of the board meeting.
Just as the first of five Gilroy parents was preparing to address the school board trustees with remarks highlighting deficiencies in the English program at Gilroy High School, English department chair Peter Gray walked out of the board meeting. The timing of his departure sent this arrogant message: No one tells Peter Gray how to do his job, no matter how poorly he’s doing it. The English department at GHS is above reproach.
We would like to summarize for Mr. Gray what he missed when he walked out. These parents, organized under the Alliance for Academic Excellence, are not a fringe group. They are salt-of-the-community contributors who have legitimate concerns and broad-based support. They have studied what ails the English program at GHS and are offering cogent and reasonable solutions for a cure:
• Accelerate the piloting and acceptance of state-approved English anthology textbooks for all grades at the high school. Quit stalling: Adopt the anthologies before next September and use them as core teaching texts around which consistent grammar and writing programs are built.
• Heal whatever philosophical splits exist within the English department that prevent consistent English curriculums from being delivered in GHS classrooms.
• Permanently discontinue the practice of selecting English literature based on convenient tie-ins with social studies classes. Return emphasis to reading the time-tested, recognized, great works of literature.
• Place English curriculum decisions in the hands of curriculum experts qualified to make them. Take these decisions out of the hands of the reading list advisory group (RLAG) appointed by GHS principal Bob Bravo – only three of its 13 members are qualified to be on a committee charged with such responsibility.
Gray’s walkout during the board meeting is not an isolated incident. It’s a continuation of a pattern of contemptuous responses to the legitimate concerns of parents advocating on behalf of Gilroy’s students. Gray has repeatedly refused to meet with the Alliance to discuss their concerns. He has never attended a meeting of the RLAG to clarify its true mission. If the board meeting was any indication, he barely acknowledges that problems exist.
Bravo, Gray’s superior, has been equally unresponsive. Instead of personally addressing the deficiencies in English studies at GHS, Bravo has deflected responsibility to the RLAG, but without giving them clear objectives. Not surprisingly, RLAG meetings have become exercises in futility and a smokescreen for Bravo’s thumb-twiddling.
This stonewalling over the GHS English curriculum is nothing new. Parents advocating for true educational excellence bumped into similar resistance last year while championing the need for an honors program at GHS. Bravo’s predecessor, Wendy Gudalewicz, told the parents, and Diaz, that an honors program was discriminatory and would be implemented only over her dead body. Diaz wisely took her defiance as an offer to be accepted.
Now a similar message needs to be sent to Peter Gray and Bob Bravo: Education is a partnership with parents in the community. Given Gray’s arrogant refusal to work with the parents, Diaz should demand his resignation from the English department chair. Diaz also needs to disband the RLAG and instruct Bravo to become personally accountable for correcting the deficiencies in GHS English studies. Bravo can start by working openly with the parents instead of using the RLAG to stiff-arm them.
This community’s demographic profile has changed significantly over the last 10 years. One result is that expectations for educational excellence have outpaced the middling goals of a school district that aims no higher than marginal improvements in API scores consistent with statewide increases. This is what Diaz needs to realize regarding the English curriculum: The objective is not just to deliver students who can pass the high school exit exam’s watered-down English requirements, but to graduate students who have a fighting chance in entry-level college English courses.
On a larger scale, the community is asking Diaz to end the disparity between what the district’s customers, its parents, are pushing for – improving the quality and depth of GATE instruction, attending to a non-existent technology curriculum, fixing the high school’s dysfunctional English curriculum – and what the district continues to deliver – further calibration of the educational apparatus to serve the needs of the disadvantaged first while leaving the brightest students to fend for themselves.
Enough already of the dogma that views the district’s programs and services as vehicles for rectifying inequities in other aspects of society. This bankrupt educational ideology, apparent in Peter Gray’s arrogant disregard and Bob Bravo’s flagrant ineffectuality, is in direct opposition to the will of the community. It renders the district’s official slogan, “Excellence, the path worth taking,” empty and meaningless filler. It does a disservice to us all.
