Despite the complaints from some families, the Morgan Hill
Unified School District’s enrollment process has actually been
smoother in the past two years than before, according to district
officials.
Morgan Hill – Despite the complaints from some families, the Morgan Hill Unified School District’s enrollment process has actually been smoother in the past two years than before, according to district officials.
Bob Davis, coordinator of student services for the district, walked trustees through the enrollment process, including placement of students in classes, during their Oct. 9 meeting in response to questions about enrollment and combination classes at Burnett Elementary school and the district’s other Program Improvement schools, Jackson Elementary and P.A. Walsh Elementary.
A school is determined to be in “Program Improvement,” according to the federal “No Child Left Behind” requirements, when all of its subgroups do not meet the required improvements on standardized tests two years in a row.
This is the second year the three MHUSD schools have been considered Program Improvement schools, despite increases in the Academic Performance Index scores.
“It seems when we solve one problem, there’s another. There’s always gonna be constant tweaking to everything we do, especially with this PI thing, that’s a whole new gadget,” said Trustee Mike Hickey, referring to the district’s enrollment process and the mandated option to move students from a school that is in Program Improvement. “I’m sure Bob (Davis) will be here next year making this same report.”
While a school is in Program Improvement, the district is required to honor parent requests to transfer children out of that school. The district is required to notify parents of students in the school’s boundaries of the Program Improvement status.
Hickey added that this school year and the prior school year have been more “relaxed” compared to his prior experiences with the student scramble typical several weeks after the start of the school year, despite the shifts due to Program Improvement.
Deputy Superintendent Bonnie Tognazzini, who has been involved with juggling students to form classes for many years, agreed that the situation this year, while certainly not perfect, is an improvement over past years.
“This year, we moved 12 students involuntarily, as opposed to 60, up to 80, some years,” she said. “We had about 20 combo classes district-wide, now we have 17 classes district-wide. It’s very hard balancing class loads. There’s always going to be someone who’s unhappy.”
Even without schools that are in Program Improvement, the district has always had to move students after the beginning of the school year for a variety of reasons, Davis and Tognazzini said, including that not all students register before school starts, some register and do not show up, and some move in shortly after school begins.
Trustee Bart Fisher, who joined the board after his election in 2006, said even if there has been an improvement in the way the district plans its classes, he doesn’t want to stop trying to improve the situation.
“For the families it impacts, even if there are less of them, it is still an issue for that family,” he said.
Trustee Shelle Thomas told district staff that the issue she wanted to address is the problem of combination classes, particularly at the Program Improvement schools. The board has heard comments from members of the Burnett Elementary staff and from families whose children have been placed in combination classes. She asked if the reason the district has 17 combination classes this year is to avoid moving students from their home schools by adjusting class levels at those schools instead of moving them to other schools where spaces might be available.
Davis said that is not necessarily the case, because students don’t enter the district “in neat packages of 20 and 25.”
Trustee Don Moody said he had a lot of questions about the process and how it is communicated to parents and the community.
“Is there anything that can be done before school starts, have we considered having an open forum for parents to learn more about this process,” he asked.
Since this was the second year the three district schools were in Program Improvement, Moody said, it is probable that many parents and families thought that the shuffle was over.
“But it happened again this year,” he said. “This is something we need to educate them about now so they know it’s likely to happen again.”
The idea of a parent forum is a good one, Board President Peter Mandel said, as long as it did not become an individual “gripe session.”
“Obviously this is the thing we get the most phone calls on, we are touched personally by lots of concerned parents,” he said. “The problem sometimes is not bad communication … it is that the answer is ‘no’, and the family doesn’t want to hear ‘no.'”
He added that in his experience, combination classes aren’t necessarily a bad thing. He also asked Davis if, in shuffling students, district officials tried to keep siblings at the same schools, and Davis told the board that was a priority in placing students.
