Back to the Table of Contents Page

Back to the Voice Home Page

Classifieds

Issue date: November 24, 2000

Mountain View School District shuffles teachers and students

By Justin Scheck

Over the past three weeks the Mountain View School District has moved approximately 130 students from one class to another as part of a "district restructuring" project in response to financial woes and declining enrollment.

At a Monday night meeting, Bubb School parents were informed that the district is relocating Margaret Binkley, a fourth-grade teacher, to Graham Middle School. As a result, the district will disperse 37 students into two other classes, including a fourth- and fifth-grade combination class that will be split up.

Bubb Principal Judy Crates addressed nearly 100 parents who came to the Monday meeting to discuss their problems, concerns, and questions about the changes.

"The purpose of this meeting is to inform you of the history of how we got to where we got to today ... and to express your feelings, your perceptions, and your ideas, and to act," Crates said.

Crates gave explanations of the district's budget woes with a simplified breakdown of how the district found itself with an unexpected budget deficit of over $500,000, a depleted reserve fund, and a current budget that, even with the deficit wiped out and the reserve fund replenished, did not include funding for a teacher raise.

Parents question timing, lack of notice

While most parents expressed support for Crates, they expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that no school board member was present at the meeting to answer budget questions. Assistant Superintendent Modrite Archibeque, the only district administrator at the meeting, did not take questions.

"The principals have got to be given a hero's award in this situation," said Joe Kleitman, a former Mountain View mayor and school board candidate. "But the board should be here." Kleitman, whose daughter was switched into a new class due to similar changes at Huff School last week, also questioned the timing of the actions.

"Why didn't this information come out before the election? If (the district) let this out, people might have been frustrated with the school board, and that would have caused change," Kleitman charged.

"Why aren't you involving us? We should have known about this months ago," parent Glenn Rudolph said to Crates.

Andrzei Szuba, whose two daughters had their classes switched, said, "I'm upset because we didn't know about this earlier. There was no meeting to tell parents there was a problem."

When asked why the district hadn't notified parents at the beginning of the school year, trustee Rose Filicetti said, "I would question the wisdom of announcing something before you do it."

According to Trish Bubenik, superintendent of the Mountain View School District, the district administration and the school board knew in September "when the student enrollment did not grow as anticipated," that restructuring would be necessary.

"The restructuring of classes was part of the budget restructuring to support salary increases," Bubenik said.

Filicetti said Tuesday that restructuring was done now, rather than earlier in the school year, not because of the elections, but because of contract negotiations between the district and the teachers union.

Bubenik added that "the decision was made to have those changes take place after parent-teacher conferencing... (and) to wait until after the fifth-grade outdoor science learning week (last week) at Huff and Bubb."

But Filicetti said also that even if the union had accepted the district's initial offer in early October, some restructuring would have been necessary. The extent of the restructuring would have been contingent on the amount of money required by the district for teachers raises.

"We're fortunate we did not have to lay anybody off," Filicetti said.

Bubenik said Tuesday that the following changes have been made in Mountain View schools over the past three weeks:

(1) Margaret Binkley, a fourth-grade teacher at Bubb, has been moved to Graham Middle School, where she will teach "Bridge to English," a specialized bilingual class.

Binkley's fourth grade class will be dispersed between other fourth-grade classes.

Michiko Hashimoto's fourth grade/fifth-grade combination class will be split into two separate grade levels. Hashimoto will retain her fourth-graders, but the fifth-graders will be dispersed through other fifth-grade classes. The fourth-graders from Binkley's class will join Hashimoto's new fourth-grade only class.

According to Crates, the result of this change will increase fourth- and fifth-grade class size from the mid-20s to 31 or 32 students.

(2) Lindamaris Ortiz, a third-grade teacher at Slater School, was transferred to be dean of students at Graham.

(3) Paula Pendelton, a kindergarten teacher at Castro School, will become a literacy coach at Castro. Her class will be dispersed into other kindergarten classes.

Castro third-grade teacher Luz Guerra will move to Slater to replace Ortiz there.

(4) Huff School second-grade teacher Linda Tanner, who had come out of retirement, has retired again. Her class students have been dispersed among existing second-grade classes.

Bubenik also said that "a first-grade teacher at Slater School will take a categorically funded teaching position as literacy coach at Slater and English Language development coach at Castro."

Tim Gex, a Bubb teacher and president of the Mountain View Teachers Association, said Tuesday that these emergency measures are the result of the district's fiscal mismanagement.

Many parents at the meeting agreed with Gex. In commenting on the district's $500,000 budget deficit, which Crates cited as a reason for the current fiscal problems, parent Dave Tuttle said, "I think a half-million-dollar bill is a clear miss."

"Someone made a mistake," his wife, Judy, said. "This could have been prevented."