Program would help students whose skills would be nurtured best
in vocational arts
For many students high school is four years of football games,
rallies, dances, dating, parties and all the other things that are
remembered fondly with high school. But for others, high school is
painful. It’s filled with over-stuffed classrooms, meticulous
assignments and time-wasting activities that don’t seem to have any
purpose at all.
Program would help students whose skills would be nurtured best in vocational arts
For many students high school is four years of football games, rallies, dances, dating, parties and all the other things that are remembered fondly with high school. But for others, high school is painful. It’s filled with over-stuffed classrooms, meticulous assignments and time-wasting activities that don’t seem to have any purpose at all.
San Benito High School finds itself in a quagmire, struggling to figure out how best to accommodate all of its students, including students who are suffering through the high school experience.
While there are options for these students – independent study or continuation high school – there are those who feel there is a need for more. Teachers and administrators want to study the issues further and determine if there are not other ways to reach that population.
Contrast that with Gilroy High School. Principal James Maxwell and his administration are working on two new programs aimed at the same populations, but that will be implemented much sooner.
“We’re trying to provide more alternatives, to find niches so that all kids have an opportunity to succeed,” Maxwell said. “Traditional high school is a square and we understand that not every student is going to fit into that square.”
SBHS Director of Special Education and Alternative Education Karen Schroder has been working on a so-called Pathways program aimed at reaching out to the students who need extra help and might benefit from more vocational studies.
Pathways is an alternative program in a small-school setting that would create a small school campus on San Benito’s current campus, aimed at three student demographics.
The first group would be students that did fine in middle school but are having problems in high school. The second group would be students who want to, for various reasons, get through high school as soon as possible. The third group would be parents and students who don’t feel like the traditional high school provides the individual attention necessary to succeed. San Benito High School has 2,700 students; Gilroy High School has roughly 2,509 students as of October.
Other parents are concerned that continuation high schools are designed for students who exhibit behavioral problems and don’t serve those whose only problems are aptitude based.
“With the current pace of high school classes, teachers can only teach to the core areas and they have to move quickly, more so than they did, say, 10 years ago,” Schroder said. “Some students fall behind because they need to re-learn certain things before they can move forward. That is tough to do with an inflexible schedule. Likewise, some students need to work and or care for younger siblings.”
Data show that the failure rate is increasing and that Fs are on the rise. Schroder said that Pathways can’t fix the current problems students at the high school face, but it can prevent some of those problems for incoming freshmen. Her intention was that the Pathways program should start at the high school in fall of 2006.
Some teachers were not on board with Schroder’s plan. In fact, several teachers spoke at the March 22 board of trustees meeting to sternly voice their opposition to the program. The belief of the dissenting teachers is that they were not consulted about the program.
“I don’t believe the information has been put out there for teachers,” said math teach Dan Quinn. “Next year I believe there will be several changes. One, a new schedule; two, changes to the graduation requirements; three, the Baler Connection [a new program that would involve small-group study halls]; four, a new superintendent. That’s lots of changes. This program may not effect the general population a lot, but I’m not convinced of that.”
Schroder’s opinion was that it was more important to feel out the student and parent interest before involving the teachers. However, this may have worked against her, as some of the teachers felt slighted.
Chemistry teacher Mike Carroll told the trustees that he’d only heard about Schroder’s proposal on Monday afternoon. He said that he’d heard that the proposed location of the Pathways campus was in the 400 block of classrooms – the new buildings located along Nash Road.
“It would not be acceptable to move us. All the math classrooms are now blocked together too. You need to look at the ramifications of this,” Carroll said.
Pathways would feature two options for incoming ninth-grade students, one focused more on vocational arts and the other aimed at students who want to attend college but fear they lack the tools for success there.
The first option focuses on basic skills – grouping students together in a learning lab to supplement their core classes and exposing them to different vocational courses. These classes teach vocational skills ranging from welding to the culinary arts, and entitle the student to a certificate of completion stating that they are qualified for an entry level position in the field.
The second option offers students the opportunity to complete up to 28 college credits – about a year’s worth of work – over the course of their high school career by taking college courses online with the guidance of a high school teacher.
Students will receive credit for high school and college classes simultaneously, offering industrious students a shot at early graduation and an opportunity to get a jump on college credits. Teachers at the meeting contend that there are already programs – for example, advanced placement and GATE – that meet the needs of university-bound students.
Pathways would have its own area on the campus, so it would be self-contained, but the students would still interact with their peers in a joint lunch session and would be allowed to participate in all extracurricular activities offered by the high school.
Pathways students would each have a teacher/mentor who works with the students to ensure their success. Each student would take six classes per day. The core classes would be the same, so for example, everyone might take ninth-grade English, then geography or health, followed by algebra I/geometry and PE as an independent study course. Following all of this, depending on which path the student is taking, they would either have a learning lab followed by an independent study computer class or Spanish I followed by an online college course.
Gilroy High School will be introducing a program in April aimed at drop-out recovery. The program will focus on the kids who are not attending school or are far behind in the required number of credits to graduate. If the students finish the program they will be eligible for a Gilroy High School diploma, Maxwell said.
The other program Gilroy hopes to start in the fall is aimed at students who want to get a jump on college, Maxwell said. The program will be offered in conjunction with Gavilan Junior College and the college will likely feature a site on their campus. Early college, like Pathways, will be aimed at ninth-graders.
Ardyss Golden, a foster parent of six years and a member of the proposed program taskforce felt certain that the Pathways program would have benefited her kids.
“One of the kids in my youth group said that if they’d had the Pathways program they certainly would have gone further, but they also would have graduated with more self-esteem,” Golden said. “As a teen, I would have done fine in high school, but for some of my foster children, that isn’t true. Everyone has their own learning curve.”
SBHS Superintendent Jean Burns Slater has previously said that she is on board with the program. She said that the purpose of education is to educate all the students that, in turn, leads to what kinds of programs the high school offers.
“We need to look at alternative programs, because not everyone is the same. We have to be flexible and able to make many changes. I think there are some people that are afraid of change,” said Burns Slater.
She didn’t know whether this program will be a successful venture, but she seemed willing to give it a try.
“We don’t know if the shoe will fit, because we haven’t tried it on yet, some people want a program to be perfect before they even try it on.”
The trustees on the other hand want to study the issue further. Schroder said that as she sees it the trustees want to continue to pursue the program, but want to delay putting implementing it for at least one year.
“I’m disappointed because when they continue to look at the data, they’ll find the same things that we did. We have a huge under-served population. We want everyone to have the best possible options so that they can find a match and be successful. It’s too bad that the teachers viewed this as something disruptive to the high school,” Schroder said.
Trustee Evelyn Muro said that this was the second time that the Pathways program had been presented and that there were certainly some interesting questions raised by the audience.
“What I heard from last night [March 22] was let’s go forward, let’s explore this,” Muro said. “They did a great presentation several meetings back, but we need to look at all the programs and how they inter-relate to one another.”
Muro said that she and the other trustees recognized that Schroder has put a lot of work into her program, but that implementing the program for next year wouldn’t be realistic.
“I certainly think that there are problem students out there who could benefit, we just need to find out why and determine how we can best serve them,” Muro said.
