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When Gardner Academy students come back to school next year, they will return to a new building and a changed school. And some of the faces that have become familiar to them may be absent.
Because of persistently low test scores, the school will be transformed into a professional development program run by the San Jose Unified School District to meet state-level requirements. And Gardner teachers will have to reapply for their jobs if they want to remain at the school.
Although Gardner Academy surpassed the state-level Academic Performance Index requirements for test-score improvement in 200304, the school did not meet the federal requirements for Adequate Yearly Progress, making it subject to sanctions from the state. One of the state's requirements is that the school overhaul its present staff, which means that some teachers may not return to Gardner Academy next year, although all but temporary teachers are guaranteed a position within the district.
But the assurance of a position within the district does little to alleviate the concerns of Maureen Hansen, a resource teacher who has taught at the school for 14 years.
"The staff is pretty rocked back on their heels," Hansen said. "We've worked very hard on improvement."
The students made sizable gains in the last year, exceeding the school's Academic Performance Index benchmark by 31 points, even after the school suffered a devastating fire last November that Hansen said knocked out nearly two months of instruction. But if the school does not meet its English language arts benchmark on the Adequate Yearly Progress test in 200506, as required by No Child Left Behind, the state could take over the school.
"As a district, we care about Gardner and the programs and people here," Superintendent Don Iglesias said at a parent meeting on Oct. 21. "The kids and teachers are working hard. But we didn't meet our targets. If we don't [restructure the school] ourselves, the state could come in."
But Hansen said test scores are not necessarily an accurate measure of the progress the students and teachers are making.
"Economically disadvantaged students and English language learners are always at the lower end of the equation," she said. "They can get better and improve, but then the bar is just raised higher."
San Jose Teacher Association president Marlene Mattoon agrees that Gardner's test scores do not portray the obstacles students and teachers face. She said she thought evaluating the progress of students who have attended the school since preschool would be a more accurate gauge of how well the students and teachers are doing.
And Mattoon said she appreciated the hard work the teachers have demonstrated.
"The teachers have put their heart and soul into the school," she said. "They help kids that need lunch money and buy supplies with their own money. They are planning and working and still trying to get the test scores up for next year."
Yet Hansen acknowledges that the changes at Gardner will yield positive outcomes for the students and neighborhood.
"The school gets a new building," she said. "And the community gets to keep the school. Otherwise, it might be closed."
Hansen also sees Gardner as an ideal environment for training teachers.
"For teachers who are learning, being in the real world is a good thing," she said. "And when you aren't working with kids who have a lot of advantages, you have to use different strategies, so that makes Gardner a good site."
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