Hollister
– The Hollister School District will introduce its new magnet
school programs to interested parents via a series of orientation
meetings starting Tuesday.
Hollister – The Hollister School District will introduce its new magnet school programs to interested parents via a series of orientation meetings starting Tuesday.
HSD approved and selected sites for an Accelerated Achievement Academy at Calaveras Elementary School and an International Dual Language Academy at Gabilan Hills School. The programs are slated to begin in August.
All parents of prospective students are welcome to attend the meetings, which will be held in both Spanish and English on their respective campuses. Parents will be provided with application packets and brochures with information pertaining to each school. Officials will also be on hand to provide an overview of each school’s focus, goals and selection process.
HSD Superintendent Ron Crates said the programs will start with only a few grades and gradually expand during the next few years. He said the district has received great interest from parents.
Angela Hagins, a Hollister parent, will be attending the Accelerated Achievement Academy meetings at Calaveras later this month. Hagins has a first-grade student at R.O. Hardin Elementary School.
“There’s a group of kids at every grade level,” Hagins said. “They’re focused, they like school, school comes easy to them and they’re ahead of their grade level.”
Hagins said she is optimistic about the program because she feels skipping children ahead in grades, while beneficial for their academic development, limits their socializing opportunities.
“We look at only their brains,” Hagins said. “We don’t see them as a whole person.”
The Accelerated Achievement Academy at Calaveras will be a “campus inside a campus,” Crates said. The program will offer gifted and talented education classes to students found to be qualified through assessments.
Dr. Sharon Kurtz, interim coordinator of special programs for the district, said both programs will draw from all HSD schools. The Calaveras program will look to fill approximately 80 seats with an even equal number of students from schools across the HSD.
Kurtz hopes the program will benefit Calaveras in general.
“We kind of envisioned that we could have special programs or guest speakers that the entire school could benefit from,” Kurtz said.
The other new magnet program will focus on language.
The Dual Immersion Language Academy will be open for enrollment of students entering Kindergarten or first grade in August. The immersion school will be an entirely different campus from Gabilan Hills School, Crates said. The program is designed to ensure students have a firm grasp on state curriculum and proficiency in both Spanish and English.
“If students stay in our program, through the years they’ll be able to pass tests in two languages,” Crates said.
The first meetings for the immersion school will be in Spanish at 9am and 6pm Tuesday in Gecko Hall at Gabilan Hills School. The English meetings will take place at 9am and 6pm Wednesday.
The immersion school will look to fill approximately 80 to 90 seats with one-third each of Spanish-only students, English-only students and bilingual students. Crates said he hopes to eventually enroll 375 students at each of the Gabilan Hills campuses.
Crates said both schools will eventually expand from K-5 to K-8. He hopes the smaller K-8 schools will attract students to enroll.
HSD officials are in the process of designing the details of both programs.
“We’re just trying to learn and see what happens,” Crates said.
By Michael Van Cassell covers public safety for the Free Lance. He can be reached at 831-637-5566 ext. 335 or mvancassell@freelancenews.
com.
