Some tears were shed – by students and by parents – but there
were also joyous reunions between friends, parents, teachers, and
the excitement was palpable, as nearly 8,000 students in the Morgan
Hill School District started school Tuesday.
Some tears were shed – by students and by parents – but there were also joyous reunions between friends, parents, teachers, and the excitement was palpable, as nearly 8,000 students in the Morgan Hill School District started school Tuesday.
“I have heard from all my principals that things went well,” Superintendent Carolyn McKennan said Friday. “Of course, you can always find some student or some parent for whom the first day was not all joy.
“All of the schools reported smooth openings, some of them of course because they do so much to prepare beforehand … By 9:30, they were all in their places with bright shining faces.”
“It was such a smooth opening,” said Martin Murphy Middle School Principal Rhoda Wolfskehl after her nearly 600 7th and 8th grade students were settled in their first period classes Tuesday morning. “We were very pleased with how things went. And we’re excited about this year. It’s going to be a very great year.”
District 9th graders have returned to high school this year for the first time in 25 years, leaving the middle schools as junior highs.
Schools in the district were also dealing with having less clerical hours to accomplish the same volume of work, but principals praised their staffs and the work they had done to prepare for the first day.
“The beginning of the new year was a smooth one for Walsh,” said
Christina Fausto, new principal of P.A. Walsh. “All the students,
parents and teachers gave me a warm welcome and were very cooperative … Staff, parent volunteers and classified workers helped out in the office when we needed it to prepare for opening.”
The transportation department also felt the budget crunch in terms of fewer people and fewer buses, and there were some problems because of it. Most buses were running a little late the first day, and before school even started, the transportation staff was stretched to the limit trying to notify all who had ordered bus passes what the schedule and stops would be.
But two specific incidents reported by parents turned out to be misunderstandings.
Despite reports from parents that students waiting for the bus to Martin Murphy at Barrett Elementary were left waiting when their bus arrived 15 minutes early, that was not what happened, according to Director of Transportation Linda Evaro.
Parents said the bus took the students who were already there approximately 15 minutes before the scheduled time, then came back late to pick up the next students. Evaro said the earlier bus that was spotted was a Sobrato bus, and the students it picked up were taken to Sobrato. The bus to Martin Murphy from Barrett was one of the late ones, and it only made one trip to Martin Murphy, according to Evaro.
Another report – that a young child rode the bus for three hours because he or she didn’t know which stop to get off – was also likely incorrect. Evaro said bus drivers were not aware of any child that stayed on the bus for that long, and no parent had called the transportation department to report such an incident.
“Of course there are bound to be some mishaps, but considering how many children we were transporting on limited buses, I think we did a wonderful job,” McKennan said. “In addition to the problems they had with computers, the transportation department received approximately 300 additional applications for bus passes between Saturday night and Tuesday morning. The staff had to phone those people and tell them their bus time and bus stop.”
McKennan said the district has not offered busing to high school students since the early 90’s when the district had 30 buses. The district now uses 15 buses due to budget cuts.
One other beginning of school problem affects a small group of district students. Twenty-three middle school students, 14 at Britton and nine at Martin Murphy, signed up to take geometry in the eighth grade. The Britton students are in a class at Live Oak High, during the school’s “zero period” and are then bused back to Britton for the start of their regular day.
The Murphy students are attending a geometry class at Sobrato High.
During Monday night’s School Board meeting, board watcher Elizabeth Mandel brought the situation to the trustees’ attention, telling them her daughter is one of the Britton geometry students. Mandel’s husband, Peter, is one of six candidates for the board in the November election.
Mandel said she didn’t find out until that day, the day before school started, that her daughter would have to go to Live Oak for the class.
“Philosophically this bothers me because you are pushing for higher academic excellence, and it seems you are punishing these students for working hard,” she said. McKennan said Friday that she and Britton Principal Russom Mesfun are working on a solution.
“We’ve created a couple of scenarios, and some of them created movement in another area,” she said. “Sometimes when you make changes in one area, it creates bulges in another place. I’m in the process of working with Russom, and we have a possible solution. I doubt it will be in place by Monday, but I hope to be able to notify parents by Monday afternoon and have it in place Tuesday.”
The Martin Murphy geometry students are already settled into a class at Sobrato and will stay there, McKeenan said. It is too early to say, though, she added, whether there will be other changes at other schools.
“I couldn’t tell you that all the staffing is in place right now,” she said. “Some children started the year with substitutes, and we will fill that spot with a permanent teacher when we are fairly sure there will not be other alterations. We don’t want our elementary students to have three teachers in a year … This year, Labor Day comes after essentially two weeks of school, and we know from conversations with our principals that some students have said they will not be back until after Labor Day, so we have to wait and see.”
