Archive for the ‘Thomas Jefferson’ Category
Confirmed: Montessori will move to TJ Elementary
California Montessori Project will be relocating to the Thomas Jefferson Elementary School located at 2635 Chestnut Hill Drive, Sacramento, CA 95826. School will be closed on Nov. 12th and 13th for the move and will resume on Monday, November 16th. SCUSD will provide bus transportation in the morning and the afternoon beginning Nov. 12th through the end of the school year.
Most of That Has Died Down
In today’s Bee, a story by Melody Gutierrez reports that SCUSD students who are having their school closed next fall get a choice about where to attend next year. A special open enrollment period for those students (which began on Monday) ends today.
Toward the end of the article, Associate Superintendent Mary Hardin-Young is quoted.
District trustees voted April 16 to close the four schools because of budget cuts, which prompted anger among parents and concern from school site staff.
Hardin Young said most of that has died down.
They would not listen, they’re not listening still. Perhaps they never will…
Regarding last night’s agenda and school closures, specifically, here’s how it went down: the decision to close Mark Hopkins Elementary will be put off for one year.
All of the other elementary schools slated for shut down; Thomas Jefferson, Alice Birney, Lisbon and the one high school, G.E.N.E.S.I.S., will close their doors to SCUSD students in mid-June, 2009.
Here are the votes:
Alice Birney closure: Bell (no), Grimes (no), Rodriguez (yes), Arroyo (yes), Kennedy (yes), Houseman (yes), Terry (yes)
G.E.N.E.S.I.S. closure: Bell (yes), Grimes (yes), Rodriguez (no), Arroyo (yes), Kennedy (yes), Houseman (yes), Terry (yes)
Lisbon closure: Bell (no), Grimes (no), Rodriguez (no), Arroyo (yes), Kennedy (yes), Houseman (yes), Terry (yes)
Jefferson closure: Bell (yes), Grimes (yes), Rodriguez (no), Arroyo (yes), Kennedy (yes), Houseman (yes), Terry (yes)
Closing Thomas Jefferson: Why?
SCUSD management is recommending that Thomas Jefferson Elementary school close next fall and that the student population (including special education students) merge with Hubert Bancroft Elementary.
During the community meeting held at Jefferson in January, the College Glen Neighborhood Association proposed a two-part plan to reconfigure both Jefferson and Bancroft into viable elementary and middle schools to better serve the community’s needs.
Why were the ideas and concerns presented at that community meeting not even mentioned in the District staff’s recent presentation to the Board?
“These don’t come lightly and we take these (school closures) very seriously.”
~ Susan Miller, SCUSD Interim Superintedent
All the Little Ones…
At last night’s school board meeting, a heartbreaking parade of teachers, parents and students voiced their concerns about school closures. Thomas Jefferson, Lisbon, Old Marshall School, Genesis High School, Mark Hopkins, and Alice Birney are recommended to be shut down this fall.
Especially poignant were a group of parents dismayed at the plan to close Mark Hopkins Elementary. One father stated that his boy would not be able to go to school if he couldn’t walk across the street because the family had no other means of transportation and an elderly grandmother who takes care of the boy would not be able to walk the two miles required to fetch the child from nearby John Bidwell or John Sloate.
After waiting three hours to address the board, another parent informed the panel that she took a day off from work and had her pay docked as a result — all for a chance to speak her plight for one, timed minute.
A 6th grader said she valued her experience at Mark Hopkins because attending the school has been a tradition in her family. She explained that she and her graduating classmates are saddened this year, however, because they leave behind all the little ones.
Have they just been wasting our time?
SCUSD Board Trustee Donald Terry raised an interesting question at last Thursday night’s board meeting. Specifically Terry wanted to know why “we are looking” at the Kit Carson Middle School/Sutter Middle school consolidation if that plan is “budget neutral.”
Like Terry, we would like to know what stands to be gained by merging Kit Carson and Sutter Middle Schools and why not even a hint of this proposal was put forth at recent community meetings. The first public mention of this plan was floated in a Sacramento Bee editorial last Sunday.
Additionally, why are Alice Birney, John Sloat, Lisbon and Thomas Jefferson Elementary schools on the chopping block for the first-round of closure? What do these schools have in common?
Except for Lisbon, all of these schools (including Kit Carson and Sutter) are mentioned for closing and/or consolidation in the original district-requested consultant report on “assets” –a report that was commissioned before the community engagement process began.
Which leads a thinking person to wonder if the board-initiated “listening” exercise was simply an elaborate sham. Was this yet another dishonest attempt to mockingly entertain “outside the box” thinking?
With all of the criteria (and added criteria) and matrices and drill downs and study areas and “looks” combined with the mountains and mountains of data, it STILL appears that the SCUSD Board is in danger of choosing the path of least resistance for budget remedies — school closure and teacher/staff layoffs.
So much for transparency.
Jefferson Elementary: More clear speaking concerning small schools
Community input and ideas from the meeting at Thomas Jefferson Elementary:
- Add more services to the community rather than remove school services.
- Our students need music and art or they leave for other options.
- Add a home school support program.
- Increase preschool capacity.
- Increase district services to hospital bound children.
- Relationships across generations are a part of the value of small schools
- The value of parent involvement and community support needs to be in the matrix.
- Consider reducing split grades by enrolling just resident students.
- This neighborhood has been promised a junior high for 40 years.
- Annual discussions about closing small schools lowers enrollment
- Many parents have serious concerns about Kit Carson Junior High.
- Teachers find split grade teaching a recipe for burnout.
CGNA proposes a two-part action at Thomas Jefferson Elem. meeting
What follows is a summary of the College Glen Neighborhood Association‘s proposal for SCUSD school consolidation/closure in east study area:
Toddler/Pre-School and 7th, 8th & 9th grade program
The Association proposes a two-part action:
1) Combine the Bancroft and Jefferson elementary school attendance areas, and modify one of the existing elementary school facilities to accommodate a k-6 and 4th R before and after school programs for younger students.
2) Modify the other elementary school facility to accommodate a full service toddler/preschool, 7th, 8th, & 9th grade junior high school, with a before and after school 4th R program intended to provide programs and activities for junior high age students. The service areas for the toddler/pre-school and 4th R programs at both locations service the District without any designated attendance areas. The boundaries for the junior high school will equal the combined current elementary school boundaries for Hubert Bancroft, Thomas Jefferson, Isadore Cohen, and O.W. Erlewine.
Special thanks to Annette Deglow
SCUSD Observer 