Early-College Academy Receives High Marks in Uncertain Budget Climate

While the budget crisis facing the school district was the biggest subject at their , board members changed gears toward the end of the evening to highlight some of the district’s more positive news.

High on that list was the T.J. Owens Gilroy Early College Academy (GECA), a four-year-old public college-preparatory high school that is the best-performing of 28 similar programs in the state.

“People think that we cherry pick these kids, and we don’t," said Principal Mary Ann Boylan. "They think we only take the gifted, and we don’t. I think the kids who are here really want to be here.”

In its first year of purely state funding after a limited start-up grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GECA has 275 students who have achieved several distinguished honors, including the highest Academic Performance Index among the state’s other early-college programs.

Plans to move the small-scale, college-centric school from a series of portables on the campus to a dedicated facility are in the works, the principal said.

“We hope to make it look more like a school than a row of buildings,” she said.

Yet students only spend a portion of their day in the discreet set of buildings on the edge of campus. The rest of it, and the core concept behind the program, is spent taking college courses at Gavilan.

Students who are accepted to GECA are required to take 40 units of college courses to graduate, receiving both college and high school credit. Some students take even more courses, with many of them graduating with enough units to start college as a junior, said the principal.

“The student who wants to work hard—they can do that,” Boylan said.

In those classes, students sit alongside their college peers.

“A lot of the instructors don’t want to know who the GECA students are, because they don’t want to be tempted to treat them differently,” said Jan Bernstein-Chargin, spokeswoman for Gavilan, “In the cases where they know who the students are, they often say they’re some of the best students in the class.”

The academy is a public school, part of the , and students are selected from the surrounding region based on a combination of academic interest and performance. Officials also consider factors like first-generation college aspirations and students with high ability who need extra support, the principal said.

Many oncoming freshmen don’t look like academic all-stars on paper, but around 90 percent graduate and enter either directly into a four-year university or with intentions to transfer from Gavilan, said Boylan.

One of the requirements for enrollment is parent involvement, something that Heather Hickerson, vice president of the parent club, said is crucial to the success of the small school.

“We have a core group of parents that are here all the time," she said. "But when we really need it, they all step up.” 

The young school has its challenges, including the high cost of college textbooks and a fluctuating availability of facilities. Two years ago, some classes even began the year outdoors while officials at the college scrambled to find room for students, the principal said.

This year, the school has plenty of room, borrowing space from the adjacent police academy. The next year should be the same, Boylan said.

With the success of its model, the school is one of six selected to be part of a survey from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. When they visit at the end of May, the institute will look at the impact of the largely low-profile group of competitive public high schools around the country.

Principal Boylan highlighted that three members of her senior class were recently nominated for a National Merit Scholarship; one student from the school won the scholarship last year.

“THREE, in this little class of 65 students!” she said.

The school is officially full for the next year, but Boylan said she is still interested in a handful of applicants pending the inevitable fact that some new students won’t be able to attend. 

Applications and more information are available on the school’s website.