Two weeks ago, a group of Aptos High School students and staff picketed in front of the school to publicize their concerns about losing the school’s seven-period schedule.
The loss of the extra class at Aptos High was seen as a necessity after the Pajaro Valley Board of Trustees voted to cut 30 teacher positions across Pajaro Valley Unified School District.
But Aptos High may have gotten a reprieve on that decision for at least one year, with district administrators and school staff set to hammer out the school’s schedule soon, PVUSD spokeswoman Alicia Jimenez said.
While that bit of potential good news was likely welcome to the mid-county high school, the students and staff at Pajaro Valley High School—who have been asking for their own seven-period schedule for years—see it as another example of inequity the school has faced since it opened in 2004 without a pool, performing arts center and athletic field.
That—and a proposal to relocate Renaissance High School to the PV High campus to make way for Ceiba College Preparatory Academy—drew dozens of students and teachers out to the front of the school Wednesday morning to hold their own informational picket.
“They see us as a middle child,” said senior Hilda Ghazanfari.
Having a seven-period schedule, she said, would give students more options for classes such as career-technical education, band, performing arts, theater, culinary and video classes.
Currently, Ghazanfari and other students take some classes at Cabrillo College’s Watsonville Center.
“We’re kind of figuring it out on our own, but it’s kind of like our own district is ignoring us,” she said.
Ghazanfari added that having Renaissance High move to the campus would strain the school’s already paltry resources.
“It’s not that we don’t want them here; it’s that PV is already so small,” she said. “We already don’t have resources. We don’t have a theater, we don’t have a pool, and we’ve been trying to get those.”
Both Aptos and Watsonville high school have those facilities, Ghazanfarin said.
Vicente Guillen, who leads the school’s Empower Watsonville—a youth group that focuses on mental health and substance use—says he also goes to Cabrillo College for additional classes to round out his schedule.
Having a schedule similar to Aptos High’s, he said, would be an ideal solution.
“We feel like we’re getting inequity here,” he said. “They’re getting more choices and we’re getting the last choices.”
PV High English teacher Tammy Harkins said that the idea of a seven-period schedule has long been on the back burner, despite teachers at the school consistently voting for it for the past three years.
“The fact is that—in our face, while teachers are getting fired—they have somehow found $1-$2 million dollars to fund the seven-period schedule at Aptos, and we’re just sitting here with nothing,” Harkins said. “We don’t have a schedule right now that serves our students.”
Harkins also said she’s troubled by recent news that the PV High performing arts center will not break ground for at least another year. That project was funded through Measure M, a $315 million bond expected to raise $18.3 million annually by placing $60 per $100,000 of assessed value on properties within the district to fund construction and renovation projects throughout the district.
“Why are we the school that gets the last of everything, that isn’t completed, that doesn’t get the resources everyone else does?” she asked.
Watsonville High School has also voted multiple times to have a 7 period day and has been consistently denied by the school district. I understand the need for belt-tightening as the current Presidential administration pushes us further and further into recession, but the majority of any cuts need to be within our very top-heavy District Office and not among the folks who interact with and help our students every day.