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City Beat
PTA presents survey of the campus at WG Elementary
Parents ask SJUSD to consider school's additional needs
By Moryt Milo
Willow Glen Elementary School PTA President Karen Potts stood before the San Jose Unified School District board at its Nov. 15 meeting and asked the trustees to look at the whole school when deciding what areas to prioritize in the proposed bond measure.
Although a previous bond measure, passed in 1997, improved some of the major concerns at the elementary school--replacing portable classrooms, replacing a deteriorating administration office, modernizing water fountains and making restrooms handicapped accessible--Potts said the list of needed improvements the school submitted to the district in October neglects to address some fundamental problems at the school.
Potts provided the school board with a November 2001 parent-teacher survey, complied by the school's PTA. The survey addressed four major issues: open-pod classrooms, which parents and staff said were distracting and resulted in a less than ideal working environment for students and staff; the school's multi-purpose room, which functions as a cafeteria, theater, classroom and daycare center and is considered inadequate in size and function compared to other schools in the district; the large number of portables on campus, which have significantly reduced the playground area; and lack of available campus parking, which has triggered safety concerns.
"We would like you to consider a whole-campus vision for Willow Glen Elementary, one that focuses on safety and instruction for our children," Potts said.
District board trustee Carol Myers, who represents Willow Glen, told the Willow Glen Resident that she agreed with Potts' presentation.
"We really owe it to that school site to fix it up," Myers said. "We need to do a master plan and come up with a major build-out instead of this patch work."
Potts told board members that two-thirds of the children who live in Willow Glen do not go to the school, and blamed this on the school's facilities and the lack of attention its campus has received over the years.
"We have great teachers and they deserve a better place to teach," she said.
The presentation by the PTA was timely, as the district has been soliciting improvement requests from each school in the district for a new bond measure that the school board wants to put before voters on the March ballot.
The board needs to decide the bond amount by Dec. 1 to meet the Dec. 7 filing deadline.
"The board is probably going to go for the maximum, which is $400 million." Myers said.
But Myers is questioning how the funds will be allocated, with $100 million earmarked for athletic field improvements and still-undetermined amounts designated to a new charter school in downtown San Jose--Downtown College Prep.
Myers said other long-standing issues, like those Potts brought before the board, need to be given serious consideration when funds are allocated.
In a fall meeting of San Jose district schools, Superintendent Dr. Linda Murray was optimistic about voters passing a bond measure in March.
This November, nine bond measures were brought before the voters from San Francisco to San Jose, and with only 55 percent approval required for passage, all bond measures passed.
With education again facing major cuts in state funding and the economy in a recession, Myers said, "A bond of $400 million is very large."
She was concerned as to whether a bond of this magnitude would be accepted by voters and said, "If you look at all the bond measures that passed [in November], their amounts were considerably smaller."
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
