Gavilan College trustee Jonathan Brusco wants to help foster the ongoing partnerships between the community college and its three surrounding school districts, so the educational institutions can identify, prioritize and tackle challenges together.
With Board approval in June of a new Committee on School District Collaboration, Brusco, who lives in Morgan Hill, joined forces with fellow trustees Mark Dover, from Gilroy, and Tom Breen, from Hollister, so each community where Gavilan has a campus is represented.
The three met July 9 to iron out the purpose of the committee – which Brusco conjured up after attending a conference that focused on creating “greater partnerships” with high schools that feed a high percentage of students into their college programs.
“We already have those partnerships and I don’t want to take anything away from (other outreach programs), but I wanted to do something at the trustee level,” said Brusco, who already spoke at a Morgan Hill Unified School District Board of Education meeting last month to inform them of the new committee.
Each committee member will “reach out in some sort of formal way” to the superintendent from their corresponding school district in Gilroy, Morgan Hill and Hollister. The goal is to “solicit information from them as the greatest challenges they face,” explained Brusco. He hopes to plan an annual or bi-annual symposium to discuss those challenges and brainstorm about solutions to them.
One challenge Brusco – a seventh grade social studies teacher at Harker School in San Jose – already identified is remediation levels. Brusco explained that many high school graduates are having to retake a significant number of courses at Gavilan before even beginning their degree path.
“That’s one of the biggest challenges we face,” said Brusco, adding that if colleges could reduce the number of remediation courses needed than they could offer even more of a variety or additional time slots of other courses. “It’s something that we can tackle together.”
The committee will hold its second meeting in August and hopes to send out a survey to superintendents who in turn can pass those along to principals and teachers to identify and prioritize the challenges. Brusco said once the committee builds more steam and issues are more clear, they will meet more regularly.
