By Kathleen Acuff
Two things are clear in the Mountain View-Whisman School District’s campus-closing drama: The district is convinced that it can’t afford to operate seven elementary schools next year, and the community of each of the two schools proposed in turn for closure is devoted to keeping it open.
Slater Elementary School is the home of the district’s PACT (Parent-Child-Teacher) program. Castro Elementary School has the dual-language immersion program. Both schools house state preschool classes for low-income families and are located in low-income, largely Spanish-speaking neighborhoods.
District trustees voted 3-2 in January to close Slater on the advice of the school closure task force, which had spent 14 months analyzing schools and district needs before choosing the two candidates for closure. Slater parents, students and staff staged several weeks of passionate protest and in mid-February won the school’s reprieve. In a 12-point memo Feb. 16, board president Ellen Wheeler, in a surprise move, proposed closing Castro instead.
Another reason to close Castro rather than Slater, according to Wheeler’s proposal, is that next year Castro will be in Year II of “Program Improvement Status” under the No Child Left Behind Act. Slater will be in Year I, when it must implement a two-year improvement plan and allow students to transfer to a school that is not in Program Improvement. In Year II, a school must also provide supplemental educational services to low-income students who need them. Each requirement can cost a school as much as 20 percent of its Title I funds.
Wheeler’s suggestion caught everyone off guard - even Castro’s principal, Carla Tarazi.
“I first heard of it when they announced it in the board meeting,” she said at the March 10 community forum at the school she has headed for five years.
A second forum is scheduled for tonight in the school auditorium. Trustees plan to vote on the matter March 22.
Three uniformed police officers looked on as the auditorium rang with shouts, applause and occasional hisses while parents, students and teachers from Castro, Slater and other schools told trustees what they wanted them to do about the situation. Many pleaded with the board to reconsider Wheeler’s recommendation to close Castro instead of Slater. Others doubted the district lacks the funds to operate all its schools and asked the board not to close any school at all. A few praised trustees for their performance in a difficult situation and urged them not to go against the recommendation of the school closure task force.
Student Christopher Pinedo told trustees he wondered whether he and his friends had done something wrong to cause their school to close. His mother, Maricela Pinedo, told trustees Castro “serves the Latino community” and wondered whether “racism is one reason for closing the school.” Many parents of dual-immersion students spoke out against losing the program.
Adults’ feelings of ill use and mistrust bubbled over into shouted demands to let the Spanish speaker translate himself when a translator mistook a statement that enrollment should be balanced across the district to refer to numbers of students rather than desegregation of ethnic groups. The translator appeared genuinely surprised that he had erred and quickly conferred with the speaker to set the record straight.
Castro first-grade teacher Linda Yung spoke in a hushed voice of building relationships with her students and their families. As she told of reaching out to one mother with whom she could not communicate verbally, she matched her actions to her words. She slowly approached the only Latina trustee on the all-female board, Rosemary Roquero, and gently touched her hand. Roquero smiled and placed her other hand over Yung’s.
In tears, Yung begged, “Please don’t take away their power to advocate for their children by being there.” In the audience, principal Tarazi removed her glasses and wiped the tears from her face.
Another Castro first-grade teacher, Laura Marshall, told trustees she has seen the district solve bigger problems than it is facing now. She added that “bad press discourages Anglos from coming to Castro” and the result has been “vicious segregation.” Castro students are at-risk academically and have the fewest resources, she said.
“It is not fair to ask the poor to pay for the bill,” she said.
The district currently operates two middle schools, grades 6-8, in addition to its K-5 elementary schools. Overall enrollment has declined, emptying 30 classrooms across the district. Officials hoped to rent these rooms for a total of $400,000 but so far have no takers. Castro had 438 students last year and has about 360 this year.
