GILROY
– Gilroy is poised to open a beautiful new middle school next
fall, but how the school district will determine where it will send
this year’s fifth- and sixth-grade grade students for the 2003-04
school year is drawing the wary ire of some district parents.
GILROY – Gilroy is poised to open a beautiful new middle school next fall, but how the school district will determine where it will send this year’s fifth- and sixth-grade grade students for the 2003-04 school year is drawing the wary ire of some district parents.
A special district committee is using school capacity, socio-economic balance and residential proximity to school sites to draft a plan for placing this year’s fifth- and sixth-graders into three middle schools next year.
By the end of the meeting, which was billed as public, the committee came up with a preliminary model for placing students into the middle schools. However, the district would not reveal the model to parents who were made to sit 30 feet away and refused to provide details to the media.
The district’s enrollment consultant, Tom Williams & Associates, is now working with enrollment data to see if the plan would meet the committee’s three priorities. The committee is trying to get an enrollment policy recommendation to the school board before the end of the month. It will review Williams’ work at its next meeting scheduled for Dec. 10 at 5 p.m. at the district office.
The committee’s criteria aren’t the most important say parents who contend the top priority should be keeping children from elementary school’s together when they enter junior high.
“The big issue is my child being with the peers she is with now. I’d rather drive my kids 10 minutes than have to have my child completely broken up from their friends,” parent Stephanie Chisolm said.
Other parents attending the committee’s Wednesday night meeting echoed Chisolm’s sentiments.
The parents say that middle school is among the most turbulent times in a child’s life and to uproot children from their network of peers could be devastating. Other parents reported their kids are already having many tearful nights over the prospects for next school year.
“We can take their concerns into account as the committee draws up its recommendations,” says Lee White, the Gilroy Unified School District’s Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services. “This is all an ongoing process. Nothing has been set in stone.”
Parents are also frustrated because last year it appeared the district would use a feeder school system to place its students into the three middle schools for the 2003-04 school year. In other words, all students from a certain elementary school would be placed in the same middle school.
“I sat on a committee for six months. The board accepted our recommendation 7 to 0,” Chisolm said.
The school district, however, claims the board approved a neighborhood schools policy it is now phasing in at elementary schools, but did not act on a strict feeder school policy for the middle schools.
“It’s logistically impossible to have a strict feeder system when you have eight elementary schools and three middle schools,” said Juanita Contin, the district’s director of student enrollment.
Contin said the strict feeder system was no longer pursued because if the district’s $69 million school facilities bond passed, which it did Nov. 5, enrollment capacity at a variety of school sites would change.
“We couldn’t complete the task at that time,” Contin said.
The district has said the ideal enrollment capacity for middle schools is between 700 to 800 kids. And now it has the committee, made up of district administrators, city staff, community members and parents, drafting an enrollment policy that will keep some schools for the most part together, Contin said, but will split other schools up.
Five parents outside the committee attended Wednesday’s workshop. They were allowed time at the end of the meeting to express concerns, but no one from the public was allowed to view the maps and documents the committee was using to draft its recommendation to the school board.
Complicating matters for the school district is that one of the middle schools, Ascencion Solorsano now under construction across Santa Teresa Boulevard from the Eagle Ridge Housing development, will be a brand new, state-of-the-art campus next school year. Even though parents from Wednesday’s meeting said they didn’t care which middle school their child went to as long as they were enrolled with their elementary-level peers, district officials are anticipating many families will want to attend the flagship campus.
The district hopes it can allay some of those concerns given the passage of the $69 million bond to upgrade all campuses. Officials also hope that a separate committee’s effort to align the curriculum of all three middle schools makes the final enrollment policy easier for families to live with, said Dom Galu, a district administrator.
“We’re trying to create a system where any child can go to any middle school and get a quality education,” Galu said.
