Unwilling to wait another year to open a fourth middle school,
Gilroy Unified School District trustees are preparing for the
worst, yet hoping for the best.
Unwilling to wait another year to open a fourth middle school, Gilroy Unified School District trustees are preparing for the worst, yet hoping for the best.
After at least five years of missing federal growth standards, South Valley and Brownell middle schools are showing signs of meeting those requirements with trustees keeping their fingers crossed that the upcoming release of a critical round of test scores will reflect the recovery.
Still, they’re not willing to bet the district’s budget on the projected progress.
The board is considering opening a fourth middle school to divert the flood of students into Ascencion Solorsano Middle School, but at Thursday’s school board meeting, Superintendent Deborah Flores and the middle school principals recommended waiting one more year.
“We’re seeing some signs that lead us to believe that this may be turning around and (the middle schools) are asking for a little more time to do that,” Flores said.
Trustees balked at the idea.
“I’m not in favor of hoping for the best and taking a chance,” said trustee Mark Good.
South Valley and Brownell are in their fifth year of Program Improvement, a classification given to schools that do not make federal growth requirements. Under No Child Left Behind, a piece of federal legislation signed into law under former President George W. Bush, parents whose children attend a PI school have the right to transfer their children to a non-PI school.
In Gilroy, that school is Solorsano which, thanks to a deluge of transfer requests every year, is “bursting at the seams” with almost 1,200 students – almost half the district’s middle school population.
Between the 2009-10 to 2010-11 school years, 299 students – mostly incoming sixth graders – have transferred to Solorsano from the other two middle schools. While classrooms stand empty at Brownell and South Valley, the district has spent $650,000 that trustees said should have gone toward improving older schools instead of adding classroom space and extra restrooms at Solorsano.
At the meeting, Good reminded his colleagues of the money they recently spent on adding capacity at Solorsano.
“That’s another million we can’t put at Rucker (Elementary), another million we can’t put at Rod Kelley (Elementary),” he said. “I’m not in favor of not doing anything. Spending one more dollar on making additional improvements at Solorsano when it’s already twice as big as the two other middle schools doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Taking a “wait and see” attitude was not an option, trustees said.
“Basically, I don’t want to take the risk,” said trustee Tom Bundros.
Trustees expect to receive the results of last spring’s standardized testing within the next few weeks.
District staff estimated Brownell and South Valley have made significant gains – adding 32 points and 20 points, respectively – to their scores on the Academic Performance Index, a statewide measure of academic improvement on a 1,000-point scale. Despite encouraging growth on the state measure, the challenge comes when tackling the federal requirement, called Adequate Yearly Progress.
“What’s ironic is that schools are making great progress as measured by API, but not making AYP,” Flores said. “So they end up being designated a PI school.”
To meet AYP this year, scores on the tests taken this past spring must show 56 percent of students are at or above proficiency on state standardized tests. The bar continues to rise every year, with the goal of 100 percent of students showing proficiency in math and reading by 2014.
“We have reason to believe that possibly Brownell will meet AYP this year,” Flores said.
But schools have to make AYP two years in a row to shed the PI label. And until then, Brownell and South Valley parents will continue to transfer their children to Solorsano, no matter how much those schools progress on the state measure, trustees said.
“I think the community has spoken in a way,” said trustee Rhoda Bress. “We can talk about AYPs and APIs here, but the truth of the matter is, when people receive that letter that gives them a choice, it tells them something. And it’s not what they think it’s telling them. These are not failing schools. These are successful schools but that letter gets interpreted a different way.”
Trustee Jaime Rosso agreed.
“We can make great progress at Brownell and South Valley, but if parents decide they still want to make the transfer, our hands are tied,” he said.
Trustees asked Flores to come back at the next board meeting with more information on opening a fourth middle school at one of the existing elementary school campuses, at the site adjacent to South Valley that housed the former El Portal Leadership Academy or in the empty classrooms at Brownell. Although they considered using Gilroy Prep School – a proposed charter school scheduled to open in August 2011, pending their approval – as another option, trustees have yet to receive the charter school’s petition and decided it was too early to reserve that alternative as a viable option.
