Calaveras Elementary School and Gabilan Hills Elementary School
are set to transition to being K-8 schools in the next few
years.
Calaveras Elementary School and Gabilan Hills Elementary School are set to transition to being K-8 schools in the next few years.
Each year, the two schools will be adding a grade until they both are at eighth-grade status. Calaveras is currently K-5 and will be K-6 next year, while Gabilan Hills is currently K-6 and will be K-7 next year, said Ron Crates, superintendent of the Hollister School District.
The Accelerated Achievement Academy at Calaveras also will follow the grade-level changes, Crates said.
The program will be known as “School of Choice” – as parents will have a decision on which school their kids attend.
“We feel parents and families deserve more options,” Crates said.
Both schools are feeder schools to Marguerite Maze Middle School. And with the School of Choice program, it will lower the enrollment at Maze, said Jan Grist, a seventh-grade teacher at Maze. She noted that the school was built for 1,200 students.
Crates said there will be 777 students at Maze next year.
“A middle school should be between 500 and 600 kids,” Crates said.
Grist, though, believes test scores will decline at Calaveras and Gabilan Hills with more students in classrooms at those schools.
“Some parents won’t want their kids with eighth-grade students,” she said.
Crates said having the School of Choice program will give parents more options and choices. If parents decide to send their kids away from their geographically designated school, they’ll have to provide the transportation, Crates said.
But for many families, if the kids don’t have a bus ride, it’s not really a choice, contended Kathi Sharp, a parent and seventh-grade teacher at Maze. She said parents should ask questions.
