School Notes: New idea for school to help struggling students School Notes: New idea for school to help struggling students (June 30, 2004)

By David Boyce
Almanac Staff Writer

Under-performing public school students in grades 6 through 9 may one day have an alternative to slugging it out with their academically stronger contemporaries if a concept in the mind of the high-school district superintendent comes to pass.

Patrick Gemma, superintendent of the Sequoia Union High School District, told the Almanac that he has spoken to Redwood City Elementary School District Superintendent Ron Crates about starting an alternative charter school, funded in part by Sequoia.

In the school, about 400 students in grades 6-9 in the Redwood City district would get the extra attention they need to help them catch up, whereupon they would be eligible to enter a district high school as a 10th-grader.

Mr. Gemma said he would consider a similar idea for the Ravenswood City School District, which includes parts of Menlo Park.

"We have too many freshmen coming to us so far behind that they don't graduate four years later," Mr. Gemma said. Raising the bar for students "is kind of basic to why we're even in education," he added.

Moving high school to East Palo Alto

Plans for the Sequoia Union High School District to furnish new buildings for East Palo Alto High School -- a three-year-old charter high school now in Menlo Park -- took a step forward last week when Sequoia's board of trustees authorized the district to enter into an agreement with the Ravenswood City Elementary School District.

Sequoia's five-member board voted unanimously to authorize Superintendent Patrick Gemma to enter into a joint-powers agreement with Ravenswood, in which Sequoia will build and own a complex of high school buildings on land leased from Ravenswood in East Palo Alto.

Sequoia would spend about $6 million to build the school. It's likely that the classrooms would be prefabricated but placed on a foundation, while the administration offices and gym would be from-scratch.

The nonprofit Aspire Public Schools would continue to run the school, expected to open at its new location for the 2005-06 school year. The buildings would be erected on the same Runnymede Street site occupied by East Palo Alto Charter School -- a six-year-old K-8 school also operated by Aspire.

"I hope this will be one of many future instances of cooperation with Ravenswood," said trustee Gordon Lewin.

E-mail a friend a link to this story.