January 28, 2005

StreetTalk by Carol Rosen

What do you think about the Evergreen School District (grades K-8) combining with Evergreen Valley and Silver Creek High Schools? What would the repercussions be?
(Asked at Evergreen Village)


“I think if it ends up giving our children a better education and if it ends up benefiting the students, then I’m all for it. I think the main benefit would be smaller class sizes in the high schools. But it would also have a major drawback. A lot more families would find a way to manipulate the system so their kids could go to Evergreen Valley. And, if the new district built a new high school, then everyone would want their kids to go to that school, and we’d have the same problems [with overcrowding] that we do now.”

Jim LaFuente, 39
Evergreen / Fire fighter

“I don’t see anything wrong with it. The thing is that we live in the Evergreen High School area but send our kids to private schools to give them a jump-start. It’s what I wanted, but my parents couldn’t afford it and neither could I. I’m happy to do it for my children and I’m really happy with Bellarmine.”

John Waterman, 53
Evergreen / Carpenter

“It would be fine. I don’t see any problems as long as they don’t change the cirriculum. I think our schools need to focus on higher curriculum standards and the counselors need to focus on the students. When I went to school, the counselors didn’t really care.”

Monica Angelo, 42
South San Jose / Realtor

“I would say that it would be the right thing to do for our children. It would provide more money for education and administrators would find it easier to handle a handful of high schools versus the number of schools currently in the East Side Union District. Right now we send our child to a private school. We live on the border of Evergreen and the neighborhood school he would go to is dilapidated and the conditions in the bathrooms are unsanitary. The teachers are overstretched and there are too many kids and not enough parent participation.”

Rebecca Sweeney, 35
Evergreen / Homemaker


“I think it’s a good idea to separate Evergreen Valley and Silver Creek High Schools and make Evergreen School District a unified district. Our schools are high performing schools and those other high schools pull them down so they are not rated higher. I think our area would benefit from such an association and could raise the quality of academics in Evergreen’s area high schools [to match the quality of the elementary schools].”

Anisha Saigo, 39
Evergreen / Software engineer

“My son goes to Tom Matsumoto School. It’s a good school and a good district. I prefer that the two high schools break off from their district and combine with the Evergreen School District. With fewer high schools, it will become smaller and thus be better managed by teachers and administrators. Big organizations often are less efficient. Their management structures can’t perform well because they are too big. Smaller districts ensure a good, even performance throughout all the grades.”

Sridhar Pathi, 35
Evergreen / Engineer

“I like the idea. I think the [high school] district is too large of an area—it goes all the way to the Morgan Hill [School District boundary]. We pay property tax for this area and I think that the high schools our children attend should be in the same area that we pay property taxes for. I’ve heard lots of complaints about the high school [Evergreen Valley].

It’s not very old and it’s already overcrowded. The campus needs to be expanded. It [the high school district] doesn’t appear to be very organized, but combining with the elementary school district might help. Now, they are adding temporary classrooms; if they keep changing boundaries they have to add to the existing boundaries. The school is not even four years old, it’s not good, there’s something wrong.”

Tian Gan, 40
Evergreen / Space designer for Cisco

“My initial reaction is that instead of breaking off, the district should have more control over where the boundary lines are drawn. I think the idea of breaking off the two schools might be a bit too self-centered—that it would hurt the other schools in the district and serve one part of the population but not all of it. Some parents think they should send their kids to the school ‘I want them to go to,’ rather than the neighborhood high school.

The idea would dramatically weaken East Side Union High School District. The drawing of boundary lines should make sense and should be enforced more strongly. If there is truly that much demand for schools here, then build another high school, but enforce the school boundaries. Right now, there’s a tremendous dichotomy in the school district. Breaking off would not create much diversity, and it wouldn’t allow the administration to do a better job of spreading around resources. There are better ways to do this than to split the two schools off. If we’re that unhappy about the district, then we as voters should get a new board—we should elect board members that will serve the district well.”

Diane King, 41
Evergreen / Director of Regional Affairs for Alora