Six years after it opened, the Charter School of Morgan Hill is
continuing to grow to the extent that it has outgrown its
facilities and its chartering agency is adding to its campus in
preparation for the Aug. 21 opening day.
Morgan Hill – Six years after it opened, the Charter School of Morgan Hill is continuing to grow to the extent that it has outgrown its facilities and its chartering agency is adding to its campus in preparation for the Aug. 21 opening day.
Charter School Principal Paige Cisewski said the school has grown to more than 480 kids this year. Four new teachers have been hired for the 2007-08 school year, she added, and every grade level has an enrollment waiting list.
The Morgan Hill Unified School District Board of Education voted at a special July 24 meeting to approve bids from two contractors, Ciari Plumbing for $371,546 and El Camino Paving for $285,825 for preparing and paving the site where the portables will be installed.
The district will install two portable classrooms and one portable restroom facility and a fire suppression system at the campus, the former Encinal Elementary School located just north of Morgan Hill on Monterey Road near Bailey Avenue.
The two portable classrooms, which will be located next to the mult-purpose room on the south side of the campus, can accommodate one class each.
The school opened in August 2001 with nearly 200 students in three separate locations. Once renovations were complete on the space in the Morgan Hill Plaza shopping center at the intersection of Monterey Road and West Dunne Avenue, the school moved into what is now the Dollar Tree Store several months after opening.
The school soon outgrew its space in the shopping center, and in 2003, the school moved onto the former Encinal campus. Enrollment has increased each year, and a middle school program was added two years ago.
“We are definitely crammed for space,” she said. “We dismantled our library in order to have classroom space, now our library is in a closet.”
But the idea of building in the near future is cost-prohibitive, she said. The school’s governing board is preparing a long-term plan, but aims to “utilize (the school’s current campus) for many years to come.”
One of the benefits of the site, she said, is the amount of land available. Staff and students have created a garden and an orchard and there is room for more outdoor activities.
The location of the campus was originally seen as problematic for the school when it was first offered by the district, with school officials wondering if the out-of-town site would discourage some parents from sending their students there for transportation reasons.
Cisewski said the school has created a carpool system, and several day-care and after-school enrichment programs provide buses to transport students.
