Charter School of Morgan Hill (CSMH) students will be out of the
shopping center and onto a school campus, complete with large play
area and basketball courts, in the fall, if details can be worked
out with the Morgan Hill School District officials over the use of
Encinal School.
Charter School of Morgan Hill (CSMH) students will be out of the shopping center and onto a school campus, complete with large play area and basketball courts, in the fall, if details can be worked out with the Morgan Hill School District officials over the use of Encinal School.
“The most positive aspect of this is that our school will be able to stay together as one whole school community,” said CSMH Executive Director Mary Smathers. “I think and hope we’re offering an educational alternative that is positive to many members of our community.”
The school is currently located in a remodeled space in the Morgan Hill Plaza shopping center at the corner of Dunne Avenue and Monterey Road and is full to overflowing. The move to Encinal will give the school standard-sized classrooms – nine permanent, three portables and one commputer lab.
An enrollment lottery was held Wednesday, to decide which new students would have spots in classes and which would be on waiting lists. The school is adding classes so that all K-6 grades each have two classes.
Currently, waiting lists have been established for grades K-3 and 7-8. There is space in grades 4-6.
The School Board voted 7-0 on March 24 to close Encinal Elementary, 9530 Monterey Road, north of Morgan Hill, and offer it to the charter school.
Proposition 39, passed by voters in November 2000, requires that charter school facilities would need to be provided by the district granting the charter.
“We are very pleased with the board’s decision,” Smathers said. “The outdoor space at the school is quite nice and something our students will appreciate.”
CSMH representatives and district officials will be meeting during April to iron out potential difficulties. Among those are transportation of CSMH students to the new campus, the possible renovation of the Encinal campus.
Just getting to the Encinal campus could be a problem for some students, Smathers said.
“At this point, we haven’t even started talking about that,” she said. “But we are very interested in trying to provide transportation for our students no matter where they live.”
Charter officials have until May 1 to respond to the district’s offer.
Renovation of the Encinal campus is another issue on the table.
The school is currently qualified to receive $530,323 in state funds for modernization. However, the district must come up with a match of $138,581, or 20 percent, in order to gain this funding.
Because CSMH would be leasing the property from the district and the school does not currently have the resources for this match, the funding is up in the air. If the matching funds are not available 18 months after they were approved – December 2002 – the money reverts to the state.
The charter school is also discussing its current lease with the landlord of the building.
The school district board voted 7-0 to move the Encinal students either to Los Paseos, in portables, or to move the sixth graders, for one year, to Martin Murphy.
CSMH opened In August 2001 with 165 students in kinder through sixth grade. The plans for the school called for opening a seventh grade class a year later, and then an eighth grade class this fall. The seventh grade class opened this year, as well as extra sections of several grades, and organizers have said they are on schedule for opening the eight grade class in the fall.
The school’s first home was a collection of temporary locations, including Galvan Park and the Mt. Madonna YMCA senior center, while renovations to the former Thrifty drug store space in the Morgan Hill Plaza shopping center were completed.
A permanent site committee has been formed to find the school a new home, since the current location was only meant to be a temporary site, and the school is rapidly outgrowing the location.
Enrollment in CSMH grew from 164 to 200 during the 2001-2002 school year and has grown from 278 to 290 during this school year. Projections for next year are beginning with 384 students and reaching full capacity of 440 by the beginning of the 2005-2006 school year.
Proposition 39 tied the charter facilities to district benefit from a state bond issue for funds for facilities: if a district chose to take advantage of the 55 percent voter approval for a general obligation bond, they needed to provide charter facilities by November 2002; all other districts were required to implement this provision by November 2003 if there is a request for a charter school within its boundaries.
