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Mountain View officially has a new school beginning next week, when young students arrive for their first day at Stevenson Elementary.
According to the school’s principal, Stephen Gilbert, renovations to the campus, located next door to the Mountain View Whisman School District’s main office, will be nearly complete by the school’s first day on Tuesday, Aug. 25.
The grand opening concludes a long discussion on what should be done with PACT — which stands for Parent, Child, Teacher, the district’s popular but sometimes controversial parent participation program — which had been housed at Castro Elementary School. Mountain View Whisman trustees voted last winter to move PACT to alleviate overcrowding at Castro.
To facilitate the move, trustees approved $2 million in renovations at Stevenson, which previously had been rented out by the YMCA as a preschool. Additions to the campus include six new portable classrooms, a main office building and lunch area. The campus also was brightened up with new coats of yellow and orange paint.
Students there will share some resources with Theuerkauf Elementary School next door, including field space and lunch delivery.
The students have also chosen their new mascot: the Stevenson Stingrays.
Gilbert, who came out of retirement as assistant principal of Castro last year to lead the new school, will run a staff of 14, including 10 teachers.
“This is the first opportunity for (the PACT program) to have its own campus,” Gilbert said.
The campus has three kindergarten classes, two first grade classes, one second grade class, two third grade classes and two combination fourth/fifth grade classes — 10 classrooms total, one more than PACT had last year at Castro.
Though it’s too early to give an exact enrollment number, Stephanie Totter, director of administrative services at the district office, said PACT’s numbers are “in the vicinity” of where they were last year. She said it’s also too early to tell how many PACT students are new to the program and how many followed it from Castro.
One concern raised last year about the move was that neighborhood Castro students would not have transportation to the new campus. According to Craig Goldman, chief financial officer for the district, the solution to that concern has always been simple.
“It was the immediate answer at the time, and it hasn’t changed, that we would provide transportation to Stevenson as we do our other sites,” he said. Goldman said any student who requested school bus transportation to Stevenson from any other school in the district, including Castro, was granted it.
There will be “over 20 students from the Castro neighborhood who will be taking the bus to Stevenson,” he said.
For now, Gilbert said, Stevenson’s staff is focused on the task at hand, working out the details that come with every new campus, such as where the lunch line should be.
I’m outraged. Special interests win the day. A new school next to Therakauf? What happened to the idea of neighborhood schools? Two million dollars? This is the first time I’ve read that figure? Six portable classroom hardly seems to echo all the calls for sustainability and green building. What a joke.
carol you must understand this is no joke. The pact always gets what they want space,teacher,money they are the most self-serving group.
Folks,
It is not a neighborhood school, it is a district wide program housed at a new site. The new modular (not portable) classroom buildings are quite striking. As has been stated over and over, school district capital funds for buildings cannot be used for operations anyway (regardless of budget constraints). Pact had to give up a neighborhood campus at Slater. Let’s see how much conditions improve at Castro during the school year before we judge whether this move only benefits PACT.
With respect to Green Building, the hard facts are that “Green” can still cost 25% more than “normal” construction. Since modulars are less expensive than “normal”, a “Green” campus for Stevenson might have cost $3million.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that special interest groups run the United States. The same is true in our local school district. PACT is made up of a large group of strongly dedicated and highly motivated parents AND teachers working towards common goals. If you are unhappy about your school or the district, then you need to volunteer, organize, and lobby for change.
Everyone needs to chill. PACT gets no special treatment. They moved because they are a self-contained CHOICE program, and Castro was overcrowded. They are and always have been run like a separate school, which is open to EVERYONE in the district. I have no problem with PACT, and I honestly can’t figure out why people get so incensed. Someone had to move off the Castro campus, and PACT was the logical choice, as I said, because they are a stand-alone program. They are not exclusive, they don’t get any more money from the district or state, etc. The do their own fundraising — but so do the PTAs of all the schools. If they hadn’t moved to Stevenson, someone would have, and the money would have been spent on MVWSD students either way.
To former pact parent do you think only pact parents volunteer,organize and lobby. Your program is as exclusive as a private school pact disrupts the balance of our district. So get off your high house!!!
Actually, I believe that PACT technically IS like a separate school, according to Education Code regulations, and has been since its inception. It was just always housed at another school’s campus. But it’s no more exclusive than any other school — anyone can apply to it, just as you can request a transfer to any school in the district, or to the Dual Immersion program. If there’s space, you can go. If you choose PACT, you agree to their model, which includes a certain amount of time volunteering, etc. If you choose DI, you agree to their model — that your kids’ homework will be in Spanish and you might not be able to help them with it, etc.
I don’t see that PACT is exclusive in any way.
To Jenfer and Doug
Sorry, but the correct term is: ‘High Horse’ . . . not High House.
So do don’t make the mistake again.
The only actually complaint I see here is that the school/program is funded well enough to have buildings? Are things really so bad that students getting a school to learn in, and their prior campus getting more space for their students to learn in, is this really something to nitpick about?
Shouldn’t people who care (ie the folks on this thread who appeared to care enough to read this article and comment) be working together to make MV schools the best in the nation, rather than tearing down any and all MV programs that seem to be working? How ludicrous is that?