Enrollment Rises While District Celebrates Higher API Scores

Enrollment has surpassed projections in the Gilroy Unified School District for the 2011-12 school year, said Deborah Flores, district superintendent.

In a report to the Board of Education on Thursday, Flores said that the most recent count put enrollment at 11,140, 177 students over projections made before the school year.

“We hope it’s not an anomaly,” said Flores, noting that the growth put the district in line with the 3 percent increase anticipated in state funding models.

Specific growth was cited in kindergarten classes, with three teachers added to make up for the unexpected numbers, the superintendent said. Last year, Gilroy Unified experienced only a 1 percent growth in enrollment, Flores said.

API Scores Bring Praise

Board members praised the district for reaching the state’s goal of an “800” score on the Academic Performance Index for the first time.

“These results don’t say everything about what an educated child is, but they do say something,” said Rhoda Bress, board president. 

Based largely on standardized testing in the 2010-11 year, scores jumped for the district and most schools and subgroups. Kermit Schrock, the district’s data analyst and testing administrator, presented the findings and compared them with projections that Gilroy Unified had calculated and presented in the board’s previous meeting.

Adequate Yearly Progress, a federal measure of schools connected to No Child Left Behind, showed several schools not hitting targets, despite having nearly universal improvements in test scores. Board members expressed frustration that the continually rising bar connected to AYP would not reflect the growth seen in the district over the past year.

Mt. Madonna High School Principal Jennifer Del Bono attended the meeting and responded to board member Fred Tovar's outspoken desire to see API scores improve at the district's continuation high school.

"I'm extremely competitive—don't let this smile fool you," said the principal. While schools will offer individual analysis of their API results over the next few months, Del Bono said that Mt. Madonna's one-point reduction to a score of 579 could be attributed to a number of factors, including an increasing of English-learning and home-schooled students at the school.

"Mt. Madonna—more so than all the other high schools—you really need to drill down into the data and see what happened in specific subjects with specific groups," said Flores. "I want to think big," Tovar said. "I really believe that we can increase the scores at Mt. Madonna."