District starts on Slater closure community volunteers for committees District starts on Slater closure community volunteers for committees (April 29, 2005)

By Kathy Schrenk

Mountain View-Whisman School District officials are starting to plan for closing Slater School by trying to get parents and teachers involved in the transition process.

The school board voted in March to close the school at the end of the 2005-2006 school year to save the district money. Now Superintendent Eleanor Yick is looking for volunteers to serve on committees for several aspects of the transition.

One reason the board decided to wait a year to close the school is the extra time it gives them work out the details of the move, which will have a substantial impact throughout the district. The PACT parent involvement program, currently housed at Slater, will be greatly effected because it is being moved Castro School.

To start the process, the district will hire an external facilitator to direct the steering committee. That person will help create five subcommittees that will be in charge of various tasks: management of change throughout the district and between Slater and Castro; magnet programs such as language immersion and PACT; neighborhood issues, including boundary changes; logistics, such as transfer of computers, books and other materials; and policy issues such as enrollment and transportation.

The chair of each committee will be a district administrator, and the co-chair will be a district teacher or parent. Those two people from each committee will make up the steering committee.

The current plan is for the superintendent to bring the recommendations of the committees to the board for approval by December.

So far, the plan looks logical and seems to involve all the important parties, said Slater parent Baird Nuckolls.

"My concern is that the people who are most impacted be part of the committee," she said. The families who live near Slater and consider it their neighborhood school "should have significant representation," she said.

Nuckolls is also glad that the various groups' needs are being addressed, she said. "Kids in PACT moving to Castro have different issues than kids who are moving from Slater to other schools," she said. "The teachers who are moving and the teachers who are getting new kids have different issues."

Helen Choy, another PACT parent, is taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the committee set-up. She wonders if the planned 10-person subcommittees will be too unwieldy. She also believes that it's very important for the families who live in the neighborhood to be heard and for their needs to be considered.

The cost of the transition committee plan, including the facilitator and substitute teacher costs or stipends for staff participants, will be about $30,000.

The superintendent's office will start seeking applicants for the committees soon. Information on how to apply will be in the next superintendent's newsletter.
E-mail Kathy Schrenk at kschrenk@mv-voice.com

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