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Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Lauren Embry (10) Tracey Fuller (11) and Jillian Towar (10), all sixth-graders at McAuliffe Elementary, say they might attend seventh grade at the newly-expanded school next year.
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Mcauliffe school to grow by numbers
By Jeff Kearns
Proponents of an expanded Christa McAuliffe School won their final victory last week, when school board members voted unanimously to okay a plan to add middle-school grades to the K-6 school. McAuliffe will become the fifth middle school in the Cupertino Union School District.
With the job of getting the green light from the Cupertino Union School District now behind them, the school now faces a bigger challenge. The start of classes in the fall is only a few short months away. "Now the real work begins," Principal Dale Jones said.
McAuliffe is an alternative school that draws its 460 students from all over the district and requires parents to volunteer regularly in the classroom.
After Jones made a short presentation to the board at its Jan. 25 meeting, there was little discussion and no disagreement among the five board members before they voted their approval--a marked contrast to the long grilling they gave Jones during a December meeting. After that meeting, the board gave Jones a list of questions, mostly about how the curriculum of the new program would fit with the rest of what's taught at CUSD. His answers made up the bulk of Jones' follow-up presentation last week.
Jones says he and McAuliffe teachers will join the annual "articulation" meetings among teachers at CUSD's junior high schools and from Fremont Union High School District schools. At those meetings, teachers iron out the details of their programs to make sure that incoming students are prepared for ninth grade coursework, and that they aren't repeating the same things they learned in eighth grade.
Board member Barbara Fielden praised the McAuliffe team for its legwork.
"As a board, we're not getting promises that you will talk to the high school district," she said. "You actually have. The program looks well thought-out."
Parents at the meeting were energized by the vote. A group of about 30 McAuliffe parents worked with Jones over the last two years to help the plan become a reality.
Renee Euchner, one of eight parents who started a similar drive for the school six years ago, and whose second child is now in second grade there, said after the meeting that the approval doesn't mean that the committee is finished with its work.
The first order of business for the group, she said, will be to figure out how to promote the idea among students and parents at the school. The committee will also need to finalize which elective classes will be taught, and nail down some specifics.
Euchner, whose older child also went to the school, says she expects enrollment to be low for the first year or two.
"I think it's going to take a while for the school to really take off," she said after the meeting. "It's very difficult for parents and children to be the academic guinea pigs, so it's going to have to prove itself before the kids and parents will trust it. In a couple years it'll be turning people away."
Jones said there will probably be one mixed seventh- and eighth-grade class of up to 25 students starting in the fall, but there could be more students than that. School officials are expecting to have some eighth-grade students transfer into the new program, in addition to matriculating sixth-graders from the school. But if enrollment levels aren't high enough, the program may not be able to get off the ground.
"It will be difficult to meet the goals," Jones said. "It's not always easy to get people to sign up for a program that they can't come and visit. This program is significantly different than what we do in K-6. And we really try to undersell this program because people have to make such a big commitment that they shouldn't come here if they're skeptical about it."
Teachers haven't been named yet, but Jones said a current McAuliffe staffer could be tapped for one new position. "We have an outstanding staff, and any one of them could do an outstanding job," Jones said. "A few of them have already asked about it."
Euchner says that in addition to academics, one of the highlights of the program will be a planned adult mentoring program in basic life skills like conflict resolution.
"These kids, even though they're in junior high, want to break away from their parents," Euchner says. "But they still need an adult in their lives that they can go to for anything that's on their mind."
Scott Canali, a parent and committee member who helped write the K-8 proposal, says the advisory period classes will meet every day.
The parents' committee has also drawn up a list of about 13 elective classes that would be included in the curriculum, to be taught by parents, teachers and outside professionals.
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Cupertino, California Since 1947
