Hollister School District trustees unanimously approved making R.O. Hardin School a priority school, which means the campus will get extra funding and resources to help its teachers better reach their students and close an achievement gap in the coming years.
Trustee Peter Hernandez was not in attendance at the special meeting at the district office Tuesday. The site will receive more than a half-million dollars in additional resources next school year as part of the special designation.
Trustees unanimously voted to make Calaveras School the district’s first priority school in April 2014. The designation for R.O. Hardin will use a slightly different model that focuses heavily on teacher coaching and mentoring, as well as a probable partnership and training with Hollister Prep School, which pays rent to the district to run a charter school from the R.O. Hardin campus.
“Simply put, we just need to invest in our teachers so we can invest in our students,” Superintendent Gary McIntire told trustees.
A look at how third graders performed on the new California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress test at the charter school and in the Hollister School District showed Hollister Prep students significantly outperformed the district in math and language arts, with more students meeting or exceeding the new state standards.
At R.O. Hardin, 86 percent of students are qualified as economically disadvantaged, which is the highest in the district, McIntire explained. Of the same students, 65 percent are English-language learners, according to the PowerPoint shared by McIntire.
The state’s new Local Control Funding Formula allows for supplemental grant funding for each foster child, English language learner and economically disadvantaged student in the district, but also mandates that districts use the funds to narrow the achievement gap between these youth and their peers, the superintendent explained.
The PowerPoint presented by McIntire showed costs totaling $595,360 for next school year to implement additional training, pay the salaries of new staff members and provide materials. Of that amount, $129,360 would be one-time costs.
Under the new model, there would be a large investment in staff to support teachers, including a teacher coach, two site support teachers and eight instructional aids, with an ongoing cost of $466,000, according to the presentation. Under the proposed plan, teachers would get two weeks of paid training in addition to ongoing mentoring and feedback from coaches, for a one time cost of $112,000, according to the presentation.
The cost of training coaches would be a one-time amount of $12,000 while the cost of training instructional aids would be a one-time amount charge of $3,200, according to the document. Textbooks and other materials for the trainings or technology would cost another $2,160, according to the presentation.
Board President Elizabeth Martinez added that Hollister Prep may do some things a certain way but she wanted the R.O. Hardin to retain its own model and to make sure the site didn’t lose the spark that each teacher brings to the classroom. McIntire agreed it was important not to lose spontaneity and creativity, but added the district also didn’t want to lose the elements of the program that would make it effective.
The implementation of an investment in teaching support staff will pair with a renewing of the campus, since trustees already approved $3.85 million in Measure M bond money and Proposition 39 funds to provide classrooms with new windows, doors, flooring, technology and LED lighting along with a single entrance to the school and better disability access, McIntire explained.
“The school will look much, much newer,” McIntire said.
Trustee Pat Moore asked whether the district had investigated the basis for the model the charter school put together and asked who did Hollister Prep’s training. McIntire explained the charter school pulled pieces from lots of places and even borrowed at least one concept from the Hollister School District. Navigator Schools, which runs Hollister and Gilroy Prep schools, wanted to create a model that could be used elsewhere, he said.
Jananne Gaver, the principal of R.O. Hardin School, added that the New York-based charter management organization, Uncommon Schools, had done some of the training for Hollister Prep.
The additional teacher coaching would be supportive, not evaluative, explained McIntire.
“Their model suggests that no teacher should feel that he or she alone has to carry this load without others there,” McIntire said.
