According to Burnett Elementary School parents, a lot is riding
on the first few weeks of school next year.
According to Burnett Elementary School parents, a lot is riding on the first few weeks of school next year.
While their children already attend a No Child Left Behind-designated Program Improvement school, few Burnett parents have exercised their right to request a transfer to a non-program-improvement school within Morgan Hill Unified School District. Parents there consider Burnett, which has one of the smallest enrollments in the district, to be a tight-knit community. They say they trust the teachers and Principal Barbara Neal to provide a stellar education despite the status.
But that could change come August. Faced with mounting debt currently totaling $3.7 million stemming mostly from the state budget shortfall, the Morgan Hill Unified School District Board of Trustees voted unanimously to close Burnett for an estimated annual savings of $400,000. All Burnett students and most staff, including all its teachers, will move to P.A. Walsh Elementary School, which, like Burnett, is in its third year designated as PI, or Program Improvement.
Burnett parents will find their children attending possibly the district’s largest school with more than 700 students, on the district’s oldest campus. And, that school will be designated Program Improvement, to boot.
“The difference is, if you’re in a PI school and know it’s PI and know how hard the teachers are working, then you know it’s going in the right direction. At Walsh, that comfort level is not there,” Burnett Home & School Club President Karen Nicca said. “I think the Walsh parents would feel the same way.”
Parent Timothy Alvarado said he’d heard talk of transferring out of Walsh, but he would have his two boys, who have attended Burnett since kindergarten, stay with the group.
“We want to stay as close to the neighborhood as possible,” he said. “I guess they feel a little uncomfortable about a new environment, but we’ll just have to deal with it. There’s not much we can do about it.”
Nicca said she hasn’t made up her mind whether or not to transfer.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I don’t know,” Nicca said.
Nicca said a lot of the Burnett parents are feeling the same way: they want their children to stay with the same group of students they’ve grown up with at Burnett, but they’ve got the PI transfer possibility in the backs of their minds. Nicca said many parents planned to submit a transfer application to keep their options open.
According to a district spreadsheet, for the current school year, the district office received 73 PI transfer requests from its four PI schools, Walsh, Burnett, Jackson and El Toro elementary schools. Walsh, Burnett and Jackson are each in their third year with the PI designation while El Toro is in its first.
The district received 25 requests from Walsh parents, 12 of which followed through with a transfer to Paradise Valley or Barrett elementary schools. There were 20 requests from Burnett parents, 10 of which followed through with transfers. And Jackson parents filed 18 applications, eight of which resulted in transfers.
Just one request was received from a parent at El Toro, which is in its first year with the status. That student was transferred to Barrett.
Of all the requests, one student was homeschooled and another was moved to a private school, according to the document.
