The Willow Glen Resident River Glen parents continue the fight Efforts to keep elementary school in neighborhood get official boost By Cecily Barnes Months after the San Jose Unified School District all but solidified its plans to relocate River Glen Elementary to Broadway High School and build a new school at the old River Glen site, local parents are still fighting to keep the school in the neighborhood. Parents recently submitted a formal request to remain at their current location, appealing to San Jose Unified's school board members to find a different solution. "We've asked the district to continue exploring options other than moving us to Broadway," says Marilyn Dion, president of the parent group HABLA. "I feel hopeful that they'll look at different options and do what's best for all the children in the district." River Glen parents say that besides forcing them to give up a school site that they've grown to love, the move to Broadway would place serious constraints on the bilingual immersion program's ability to grow. Although the school currently offers only one class per grade, many people associated with the program have hoped it would soon grow to two classes per grade. Limited classroom space at the Broadway location would prevent that from happening. "We would like our program to have the opportunity to grow because we continue to have 100 children in San Jose Unified on our waiting list and we'd like to include those children in our program," Dion says. "And we would like to stay at the River Glen campus because we feel it's an appropriate location and that there's room for growth." According to San Jose Unified's spokeswoman Maureen Munroe, the school district has not ruled out other possibilities for the River Glen program. Although U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte approved the relocation plans as part of the district's court-ordered desegregation, there's still some room for flexibility. "[Judge Whyte] did approve the plan, and the plan that was submitted had a specific site for the school to be built. However it does not mean that there may not be other solutions if this solution proves to be untenable," Munroe says. The decision to move River Glen came after San Jose Unified began planning a policy shift from court-mandated bussing back to neighborhood schools, and discovered that up to 1,500 students would have nowhere to go. A panicked search began for a new school location, but an affordable location was not found. The district surveyed its options and decided to build a larger school on the River Glen site, and move the program to Broadway. "We chose this solution because we had so much difficulty identifying land that we can build on that we could afford," Munroe said. "The objective is to create more capacity in the northern part of the district." River Glen parents however, intend to keep pushing the school board to find a different solution. Board member Carol Myers says that although many possibilities have already proven untenable, the board will remains open to new suggestions. "Sometimes people come up with some really really creative ideas that we haven't thought of, and we're saying, 'hey we'll entertain any option you come up with, but we have to build a site for these children who will have no school," Myers says. Without promising anything, Maureen Munroe also assured the parents that Superintendent Linda Murray is aware of the conflict and looking into other possible solutions. [ Back to Contents Page | Willow Glen Resident Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Willow Glen Resident, January 27, 1999. ©1999 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.