With two votes Monday night, Morgan Hill School Board trustees
settled a question that has been lingering for months: will Encinal
Elementary School close next year?
With two votes Monday night, Morgan Hill School Board trustees settled a question that has been lingering for months: will Encinal Elementary School close next year?
Trustees voted unanimously to close the school at the end of the current school year and move the fifth and sixth graders – this year’s fourth and fifth graders – to Los Paseos Elementary or to Los Paseos and Martin Murphy Middle. Both schools are at the north end of the district and within San Jose city limits, while Encinal is in the Coyote Valley area of San Jose.
The board did not make a decision about where the students will go.
“I am very concerned that we make the decision as soon as possible,” said Trustee Shellé Thomas. “We need to look to next year now and bring a consensus to the table.”
Three Encinal parents told the board they wanted the Encinal/Los Paseos community to be a part of the decision-making process.
“It feels like, during this whole episode that the community has gone through, that we’ve had a one-way communication with the board,” said parent Christie Herrington. “We’ve told you our needs, what our children need. We’d like to have a two-way communication. We’d like you to tell us this will work, this won’t work, for XYZ options.”
The parents also expressed the hope that the issue would quickly be resolved.
“Last year, I had a fourth grader wondering if he would go to Los Paseos or Encinal,” said parent Katrina Patterson. “This year, I have a fifth grader wondering if he’ll go to Encinal or Martin Murphy next year … He comes home with concerns regularly because it hasn’t been addressed … So please pass on a clear directive that we can pass on to our children.”
Trustees Amina Khemici and Thomas and Superintendent Carolyn McKennan met with Los Paseos Principal Joanne Yinger and members of the joint Encinal/Los Paseos School Site Council on March 12 to discuss four options created by district staff.
The council favored options one and two. The first option has K-5 at Los Paseos and sixth grade at Martin Murphy Middle (for one year only). The second option would place both grades five and six at Los Paseos.
Tied in to the question of where to put the two grades is another consideration: the request by the Charter School of Morgan Hill (CSMH) for facilities. Proposition 39 requires that the district provide facilities for charter schools.
CSMH made a formal request for facilities on Sept. 30. According to Prop 39, the granting district must provide facilities to charter schools requesting them by November. The district is required to give the charter school an official response by April 1.
Trustees voted 7-0 Monday night to grant the request for 15 classrooms and adjoining play area at Encinal to CSMH.
The charter school, which is currently located in a remodeled site that once housed a drug store in the Morgan Hill Plaza shopping center, projects an enrollment of 385 for next year. This would use all the existing space at Encinal, and, if the decision is made to retain even one grade level of students at Encinal, most likely the fifth graders, two portables would be necessary to accommodate the students, according to Deputy Superintendent Bonnie Branco.
Branco said CSMH representatives would be meeting with district representatives weekly beginning in April to iron out details, as well as other potential problems created by the charter school’s move to Encinal.
