A special meeting inviting the Marguerite Maze Middle School community to comment on a plan to move the Accelerated Achievement Academy to that campus had no parent speakers this week, according to a school district trustee.
“I was expecting some parents, I guess,” said Board President Elizabeth Martinez, who added that with changes going on at the school, she was unsure how much was communicated about the meeting. “I don’t know. I can’t say that’s an excuse because my understanding was it was going to be communicated to both sites.”
In early November, the Hollister School District put Maze’s Principal, Diane Steele, on special assignment. The change came after parents complained about the principal during public comment at several board meetings earlier in the school year.
The special meeting Monday—following a five day break for the Thanksgiving holiday—was meant to be an opportunity for parents and staff at Maze to comment on the proposed plan for the academy’s new location and to get a detailed explanation of it from the district. The meeting for the academy’s parents and teachers was held Tuesday at Calaveras.
The presidents of the parent clubs at Maze and the academy could not be reached immediately for comment.
Martinez had first suggested the district hold the special meetings during a board meeting in October. At that meeting, trustees voted unanimously to allow the district’s facilities committee to continue investigating the move.
Students at the academy could be commuting to a new campus as soon as the 2016-17 school year.
Concerns with moving the fourth through eighth grade academy to the middle school include increased traffic congestion; the logistics of separating lower and upper grades; and long-term growth in the area.
The district held similar meetings in mid-January with the Gabilan Hills and Hollister Dual Language Academy schools, which share a campus. In those special meetings, trustees invited parents and staff from the schools to share their opinions about allowing that academy to expand at its current site.
Martinez emphasized the importance of providing similar community meetings before the board made a decision on the Accelerated Achievement Academy.
“I mean this involves their children and their opinion matters to me personally,” Martinez told the Free Lance this week. “To make any decision on their behalf and not include them would just be ridiculous in my eyes.”
