Does your left hand ever wonder what your right hand is doing?
The city’s two hands – the Morgan Hill City Council and Morgan Hill
Unified School District Board of Education
– met Wednesday night to bring each other up to speed on the
goings-on of each government.
Does your left hand ever wonder what your right hand is doing?
The city’s two hands – the Morgan Hill City Council and Morgan Hill Unified School District Board of Education – met Wednesday night to bring each other up to speed on the goings-on of each government.
Items of mutual interest discussed during the meeting, at the El Toro Room in the Community and Cultural Center, included school safety, possible uses of closed Burnett Elementary School and portions of Britton Middle School’s campus, and joint field and facilities administration.
Mostly, the two bodies heard staff reports from each agency.
Police Chief Bruce Cumming spoke of the school resource officers’ successes over the past year. He stressed the importance of the program, noting that the high volume of expulsions this past year has calmed the campuses.
Board President Don Moody read an extensive list of student achievements, including the increase in English language learners being reclassified as English speakers, from just 84 in 2005 to 174 in 2009.
Deputy Superintendent Bonnie Tognazzini updated the two bodies on the 10-acre site at Cochrane and Peet roads, which was dedicated as a future school site five years ago. The district has another five years to determine whether or not the site will work for a school.
Recreation Director Steve Rymer presenting the findings of a committee to explore forming a cohesive swim community in Morgan Hill, with the city’s swim programs feeding into high school aquatics programs and community teams.
Mayor Steve Tate said that if the city and school district could make it work for aquatics, then they could come to agreement on anything.
Tate said the meeting was a good first step to building bridges between the two governments.
“Everybody wants to be involved,” Tate said. “We get a lot of benefit if we understand better the personalities, the hot buttons of the other body members. We’ll have better collaboration and better communication.”
Based on these reports, the group sent a list of priorities to the City/School Liaison Committee, led by Tate and Councilmember Larry Carr and trustees Moody and Fisher. The priorities include pursuing teacher housing as part of a mixed-use project at Britton; campus safety; using Burnett as the corporation yard; the 10-acre site at Cochrane and Peet that should eventually be a new school; and comprehensive swim services.
