Dear Editor, My son is a freshman at Sobrato High School. He
played football and is now running track. I am a very active parent
at our high school, and find the articles that have been written by
your staff and Live Oak High Head Football Coach Glenn Webb very
offensive. The administrators, faculty, and parents have been
working very hard and deserve positive recognition.
Dear Editor,
My son is a freshman at Sobrato High School. He played football and is now running track. I am a very active parent at our high school, and find the articles that have been written by your staff and Live Oak High Head Football Coach Glenn Webb very offensive. The administrators, faculty, and parents have been working very hard and deserve positive recognition.
A new high school has been wanted in this community for years. It has taken quite some time, but finally it was built. The need in our community was there. The classrooms at Live Oak are packed with students, so this lightens the load.
But ever since this high school has started teaching and coaching students in August 2004, there has been one rebuttal after another. Ann Sobrato High School is being treated as if there is something wrong with it instead of looking at all the good it has in it.
And who is suffering? Not the principal, not the coaches, the students are.
Time and time again the students are being put in awkward situations that are making this small community a war zone. And you are creating the battlefield in your paper.
I have not seen articles about a Live Oak coach turning out the lights on the football field, while the Sobrato High wrestlers were running on the track, printed in your paper. And yes this has happened more than once to our wrestling team.
Deana Campeau wrote a column on the editorial page in February 2005 talking about why parents in Morgan Hill and Gilroy are choosing to send their kids to a private school rather than a public school.
Her conclusion on this subject was the fact that parents really want to be heard by the administration of the school in which their children attend.
Sobrato Principal Rich Knapp listens to every parent and their concerns that they have in regards not only to academics, but athletics. What a treasure we have in him. And for this, because this is what people really want, he is criticized and slandered. What sense does this make? Parents do have a voice, and we want to be heard.
As a parent, I know that when I make a phone call and need questions answered, I call the high school and I get a response within hours. That action is priceless to a parent during the most trying years of parenting.
Mr. Knapp has bent over backwards to help get our parent organizations get off to a good start by giving them fundraising opportunities that other school may not have.
He is an involved administrator by participating in parent meetings that are held at 7pm, time keeping at the basketball games, and he is the person that I call when I need immediate results. He has been a true leader in these trying times of opening a brand new high school.
Football Coach Jeff Patterson has been a wonderful mentor to not only my son and other football players, but also to many kids on campus.
He has always had an open-door policy in which the kids can talk to him at any time, and they will never be turned away. He has made a football team out of many first-time football players, and is going to make a varsity team out of these kids.
People need to remember that our enrollment is small, so we take all kids that try out for our athletic teams, including football, and make everyone a player. This makes for an inexperienced football program.
I give Coach Patterson kudos for taking all of the dirty looks, embarrassing innuendoes and a first-year football program, and turning it into a positive, competitive, learning experience for our kids.
And “no,” transportation was not a factor into pulling out of the TCAL. If that was so, why are we going to be traveling to Fortuna? And most of the parents will travel with the team to Fortuna, just as most of the parents traveled this year.
You don’t need to sympathize with our student athletes or parents. They have the best of both worlds. Not only do they have great coaches, and teachers, but they have a principal that they feel free in talking to because he really listens.
This school is the closest to a private school as your going to get without paying tuition. Our children are excelling academically and athletically. At our school every child has a chair, and everyone has a voice.
Go Bulldogs!
Robin Henke, Morgan Hill
