On the heels of a brutal battle over two possible incoming charter schools that caused a deep rift in the community of Morgan Hill, a new educational debate has emerged over the forthcoming San Martin/Gwinn magnet school and whether it should expand to include the seventh- and eighth-grades.
The focus academy effort, which launched two years ago with the opening of the Jackson Academy of Math and Music, or JAMM, is a key strategy in Morgan Hill Unified’s response to local parents who have openly demanded more educational variety, diversity and alternatives for their children. By fall 2014, SMG will be transformed into an environmental science focus academy and P.A. Wash will become a science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics focus academy.
Principal Kathy Yeager thinks SMG students would be better served if the school tacked on seventh- and eighth-grades. That, however, would take students away from Britton Middle School, which is being considered for an elaborate $20 million renovation project in the near future. School trustees are also reluctant to approve another K-8 program.
“The K-8 option offers the benefit of providing students with a stable learning environment for nine years,” said Yeager when asked about advantages of having a K-8 program. “Teachers in the K-8 environment have fewer students over the course of the day than middle school, so they are better able to meet the academic and social needs of seventh- and eighth-graders.”
But a new issue has arisen regarding potential impacts to Britton and Martin Murphy middle schools, since most of SMG’s students attend middle school at Britton. If P.A. Walsh also adopted a K-8 grade configuration, Martin Murphy would be the most impacted.
Following the blueprint of JAMM – the district’s first magnet academy that expanded to serve grades K-8 – SMG is exploring the possibility of following suit.
But a majority of MHUSD trustees aren’t sure it’s the right way to go.
“I really feel like students benefit from the middle school experience and it gets them ready for high school,” explained MHUSD Trustee Amy Porter Jensen, who also offered high praise for the Britton science department. “I really think Britton has an amazing science program. Their science teachers are amazing. I don’t see (the students) losing out on any science experience at Britton. It will only continue and enhance what’s being done at SMG.”
Discussion over SMG’s grade configuration was a hot topic at the Feb. 11 School Board meeting, where Yeager presented trustees with a survey showing more than 60 percent of parents whose children are SMG sixth-graders would prefer to have their kids stay put for the seventh-grade, if that was an option.
The survey, which was sent out to 525 households in recent months and garnered 395 responses, was designed to gauge community interest in expanding SMG’s grade configuration. Staff did follow-up phone calls to all sixth-grade parents as well.
Trustees have not set a date to vote on the configuration. The next meeting is March 11.
Those who oppose the expansion of SMG point to the example of JAMM, which opened as a K-8 school in 2011-12 and subsequently caused enrollment at Britton and Martin Murphy middle schools to drop by more than 40 and 60 students, respectively, over the last two years.
According to MHUSD data, 36 students who potentially would have attended the seventh grade at Murphy are attending JAMM this year instead. Another 80 El Toro Elementary students – who would normally go on to attend Murphy – also transferred into JAMM over the last two years.
“Martin Murphy is getting a lot of the Measure G money,” and is using that to implement new classroom technology in “impressive and important ways,” Ables added. “To take students away from (Martin Murphy) at some point would be detrimental to the programs that they are trying to build through the Measure G money.”
Currently, JAMM has 81 seventh- and eighth-grade students combined. San Martin/Gwinn has 66 sixth-graders this year. Generally, nearly all of SMG’s graduating sixth-graders typically go on to attend Britton Middle School since it’s closer unless they make a transfer request.
Lower enrollments wreak havoc on creating middle school master schedules since they must be crafted well ahead of time to ensure the adequate number of required core courses are available to students, according to Superintendent Steve Betando. It also presents staffing issues with less courses offered for each.
“The smaller (middle) school you get, the more difficult it is to do master scheduling,” said Betando.
Betando has promoted the focus academy formats since taking over as the district’s leader in July 2013, but also underscores the complexity of building focus academies into K-8 programs.
Gemma Ables, vice president for the Morgan Hill Federation of Teachers, is also concerned about the distribution of the $198 million capital improvements bond approved by voters in November 2011. Among that first series of $55 million in disbursements is a $22 million, district-wide technology plan that identified Martin Murphy as the pilot site.
Talk of a possible decrease in middle school enrollment coincidentally bubbled up the same night MHUSD unveiled a more $20 million proposal to completely renovate Britton – at 75, it’s the oldest campus in Morgan Hill. There is no timetable for the Board to vote on a Britton renovation project.
“I think Britton needs to be remodeled regardless of what happens with SMG,” said Porter Jensen. “I don’t know about to that extent, but it definitely needs to be remodeled.”
Porter Jensen said there is no correlation from one to the other since renovations at Britton “have been discussed for a while” and will happen regardless of SMG’s grade configuration.
As for expanding SMG in a fashion similar to JAMM, trustees seem reluctant. Porter Jensen wants to hear directly from SMG families to learn their perspectives as well as reach out to middle school families for input.
Trustee Shelle Thomas thinks the Board should consider extending SMG’s grade levels if the new magnet program proves to be successful and attractive to families over the next two years. Board President Don Moody said he was “not the least bit surprised by the numbers” from the SMG parent survey, mostly because SMG parents are naturally comfortable and familiar with the school. Trustee Ron Woolf said he doesn’t “see 61 percent as an overwhelming number” that warrants expansion.
Ables requested the Board “get information from all the stakeholders, not just SMG and the people that are working on their new focus academy.”
She explained how adding two grades to another elementary school site directly impacts the middle schools, and suggested talking with parents and teachers at both sites before making a decision.
Expansion or not, Nancy Moore – a fourth-grade teacher at SMG for the last 12 years – said the new environmental science academy “is something that we’re excited about” and is “absolutely a good match” for the surrounding community with strong agricultural roots.
About the new San Martin/Gwinn Environmental Science Focus Academy
• Will touch on all areas of science, including ecology, physics, chemistry and zoology, and allow students to “take learning outside the classroom” to destinations such as Uesugi Farms in San Martin. The school garden will be used more regularly for lessons such as plant structure and functions, the life cycle of plants and insects, and photosynthesis.
“We are using site and district funds to load two science labs with equipment where teachers will take their students weekly to engage in scientific practices under the guidance of an on-site science teacher,” said Principal Kathy Yeager. “We will be trained by the end of June 2014 and ready with our science units for the start of the 2014-15 school year.”
