Calaveras Elementary School and Gabilan Hills Elementary School
go K-8
Calaveras Elementary School and Gabilan Hills Elementary School
will have a few more students next year. In fact, in a few years
the elementary schools will offer kindergarten through eighth
grade.
Calaveras Elementary School and Gabilan Hills Elementary School go K-8
Calaveras Elementary School and Gabilan Hills Elementary School will have a few more students next year. In fact, in a few years the elementary schools will offer kindergarten through eighth grade.
“It’s a real major reinvention,” said Ron Crates, superintendent of the Hollister School District. “We’re reinventing the district to improve scores and to give more choice to parents.”
Gabilan is graduating its first-ever sixth grade class this year, Crates said. Next fall, the first seventh grade will begin.
The transition will be complete 2009-10, when the first eighth grade starts.
Calaveras will add its first sixth grade class for fall 2008. Their transition to K-8 will be complete in 2010.
After the transition, enrollment at Calaveras will be about 650 students. Enrollment at Gabilan will be no more than 800 kids.
K-8 schools tend to be smaller than middle schools, Crates said.
“Some families feel more comfortable having their kids go to a smaller environment,” Crates said. “We feel the two middle schools are good, but some families like to have that option.”
Marguerite Maze Middle School and Rancho San Justo Middle School are the sixth through eighth grade schools in the district. Both have an enrollment of 1,000 students, according to the California Department of Education.
Calaveras and Gabilan feed into Maze, Crates said. Enrollment at Maze and Rancho is expected to decrease slightly, due to the K-8, Crates said.
Residents of the Hollister School District can opt to enroll their children in one of the two middle schools. Or starting next year, they can have them stay at Calaveras or Gabilan, Crates said. Enrollment at Calaveras and Gabilan is first come, first serve.
“The sixth, seventh, and eighth grade at Gabilan will be much smaller, kid-wise, than at either Maze or Rancho,” Crates said.
Gabilan Hills staff handled just 20 percent the number of sixth graders as Maze Middle School this year.
“Whenever there’s 60 kids versus 300, you can’t help but know them better academically, socially,” said David Salles, the vice principal of Gabilan.
Some families have left the school district so their children could attend K-8 schools, Crates said.
Spring Grove Elementary School is a K-8 school in the North County Joint Unified School District. Enrollment is 560 students, according to the CDE.
“Of all the kids who attend there, 25 percent are kids who live in our school district,” Crates said. “One of the reason they say they go there is because they want a smaller environment, a smaller school.”
The K-8 school has been well received among parents, Crates said.
“We have space for about 30 kids at Calaveras next year, and it’s full,” Crates said.
Angela Scarcella is president of Gabilan’s parent teacher organization. Her daughter is finishing sixth grade at the school.
“I think that she’s enjoyed it,” Scarcella said. “At first she didn’t want to, but I think she’s glad that she stayed at Gabilan. Me too.”
Scarcella said she thought her daughter would benefit from staying at Gabilan.
“I just didn’t think that she would do well in a Maze atmosphere, with a large school and so many kids there,” Scarcella said.
Next year, her daughter will be attending seventh grade at Gabilan.
“She was on the first girls’ basketball team,” Sarcella said.
To maintain the spirit of a middle school, administrators will add another sport next year, add a few electives and hold a couple of dances, Scarcella said.
“We’re toying with the idea of splitting our yearbook, doing sixth, seventh and eighth on its own,” Scarcella said.
Scarcella was initially supportive of a K-8 school.
“With our two middle schools, there are so many kids there,” Scarcella said. “I thought that would alleviate some of the crowding at Maze and Rancho. It gives parents a choice.”
Scarcella is unconvinced that switching from a K-8 school to a large high school will be a difficult transition for her daughter.
“I’ve been thinking about that, too, but I don’t know if there’s a shock from going to a neighborhood school to a high school,” Scarcella said.
Middle school aged children at the K-8 will still switch classes, Crates said.
“Usually, when you get into a smaller middle school environment, you do more team teaching,” crates said. “One teacher may teach math and science, anotherm ay teach language arts and social studies.”
Instead of having five or six different teachers, students at Calaveras and GAbilan might have two or three, Crates said.
The teachers will be transferred from other schools, Crates said.
“No one will be loosing a job over this,” Crates said.
The culture of a K-8 school is different than a middle school, said Luciano Medeiros, principal at Tres Pinos Elementary School, a K-8 with about 130 students..
“It’s more like a family, Medeiros said. “The eighth-graders know the kindergarteners.”
A K-8 is a more nurturing environment than a middle school, Medeiros said.
“I always thought that junior highs were a mistake,” Medeiros said. “When children get to a certain age, I think sixth grade and up, they start to get a little more active. I think having so many on one site sort of exponentially increases the problems.”
There is more continuity at a K-8, Medeiros said.
“The longer you stay at a school,” Medeiros said, “it becomes part of you.”
The attendance rate at Tres Pinos is around 96 percent, Medeiros said.
“They know my expectations,” Medeiros said. “Our last big fight was three years ago.”
The suspension rate for drugs or violence at Spring Grove is 5 percent, according to the CDE.
Numbers at Aromas School and San Juan School are similarly low. Both are K-8 schools with enrollment around 450.
Maze had a suspension rate of 22 percent while Rancho had a suspension rate of 18 percent.
Students at K-8 schools tend to perform better academically, Salles said.
Studies found that middle school students in K-8 schools had better attendance, higher self-esteem, reading achievement and performed significantly better on state tests than students in 6-8 grade schools, according to Theodore Coladarci and Julie Hancock on a Web site from the Journal of Research in Rural Education.
Sixth graders at Gabilan have showed progress already, Salles said. In the fall, they received the highest scores on the district-wide math test.
“We didn’t expect that to happen the first year,” Salles said.
K-8 schools are safer academically, Salles said.
“It’s less likely that students will also fall through the cracks,” Salles said. “You have a whole string of teachers who know that student. You just don’t get lost in a shuffle.”
