Photo Credit: Green & Gold File Photo
This sign was installed when Fremont was one large high school. In 2004, the campus broke up into small schools. However, the schools will return to a large high school in 2012-13 due to declining enrollment and budget cuts.
March 8, 2011
Staff report
But students aren’t sure change will be good.
“Small schools are better,” said Gloria Canela,17, an EOSA junior. “You have more attention, and by attention, I mean from the teachers. They can help you more.”
“I’m going to transfer, because it’s going to be crowded and the environment is going to change,” said Media Academy freshman Frank Hartwell IV.
He predicted that “there will be more fights and things will become more messy between others” if Fremont’s schools merge.
Matthew Duffy, one of two network executive officers overseeing OUSD high schools, will be in charge of the proposed mergers.
In e-mail exchanges with Oaktown Teen Times reporters at EOSA and Media Academy, Duffy was open about the challenges he faces.
“I currently believe the three (Castlemont) schools are bleeding enrollment, and many parents and middle schools have lost faith in the Castlemont Community of Small Schools to educate their kids, and they are making other choices,” Duffy wrote to EOSA reporter Alizhey Black.
“We offer fewer and fewer (Advanced Placement) classes,” Duffy wrote. “We spend our money staffing offices and attendance instead of (paying for) teachers and other services.”
Duffy disclosed that “Castlemont alone was given an extra $700,000 this year just to stay afloat,” with the money coming from other schools in the district.
“I will absolutely not abandon (EOSA) into some sloppy merger,” Duffy added.
According to Duffy, a combined Castlemont would open in 2012 with only 500 students, “which is considered a small school and is the same number of kids the small schools opened with seven years ago.”
“You can consider the new school a small school, which is strange to think about,” Duffy observed.
EOSA Principal Matin Abdel-Qawi believes the proposed merger is “good and bad, sweet and sour, up and down.”
Breaking Castlemont into small schools in 2004 was the right thing to do, “(although) the students are not performing as well as we wanted them to.”
“If we get the schools together, maybe there will be more students to come to our school,” Abdel-Qawi said.
But Media Academy founder Michael Jackson was not so optimistic.
“My life work, down the toilet,” said Jackson, a history teacher. “I am the last man standing. I put my whole life in the Media Academy … to see it go away is like (flushing) it down the toilet.”
Some students worry that big schools will mean big trouble.
Before Castlemont was split up, “there would be fights between blacks and whites on a daily basis,” said an EOSA student, who asked to remain anonymous. Combining the schools “is bad because there will be more drama, and more fights.”
However, Saundrea McElroy, 14, an EOSA freshman, said a combined Castlemont might be easier to navigate. “I wouldn’t feel safer or more in danger,” she said. “I just think it would be less confusing without so many different schools on one campus.”
Academies may take the place of small schools. “I think we’re going to work harder on making (small schools) the same as small academies,” said Robin Glover, Mandela’s principal. Incoming 9th graders at Castlemont next year will share “a core academic program led by a dynamite set of leaders and teachers,” according to Duffy.
Still, some teachers are reluctant to set aside the work all they’ve done to build their small schools.
“EOSA has a really strong school culture and I don’t want to lose it,” said Katie Wade, physics/chemistry teacher.
“This was a hard decision to hear because everyone has worked hard,” said Sarah Mazzotta, math/chemistry teacher at Media.”I feel for students because they want a safe and stable place to go to school; it’s hard when the environment is changing to get that.”
Upperclassmen are philosophical.”It doesn’t matter to me so much because I won’t be here,” said Ayana Cruz, 16, an EOSA junior who plans to graduate next year.
“I think it’ll be harder for (freshmen and sophomores) though, because classes will probably be farther away, and it would be harder for teachers to help out because of all of the other students.”
See Duffy’s interview with Ali Black at www.eosainkinc.wordpress.com.
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