Superintendent Urges School Board to Move Forward With Sixth Grade Transition

It appears the San Bruno Park School Board is planning to proceed with moving sixth graders to Parkside Intermediate next year, despite warnings from the school's administrators that the school won't be ready.

At a , the board will be deciding whether to continue moving forward with the effort despite .

Superintendent David Hutt has recommended that the process stay the course because all the problems that were previously raised have now been resolved.

"While all parts of the plan have not been perfect nor happened at the time desired," Hutt said in his recommendation to the board, "a great deal of coordinated work has been accomplished."

Two of the biggest holdups leading up to the impasse were the fact that the school had no calendar for next year and not enough teachers.

According to sources, the district wouldn't approve a calendar because the teacher's union didn't want to agree with cutting two additional work days from next year's schedule. The negotiations have finally ended, and the teachers agreed to losing those extra work days, which means they'll face a 1 percent decrease in their salaries.

The other issue—not having enough teachers—could have been prevented a long time ago, said Parkside Assistant Principal Dan Lyttle.

All of the teachers who were going to move to Parkside along with the students were required by the district last summer to take a class and test to get a credential that would allow them to specialize in a subject. To this date, none have passed the test.

Lyttle said he and Parkside Principal Angela Addiego have insisted all along that process wasn't necessary. Now, it appears the district agrees and the incoming sixth grade teachers will be allowed to come to Parkside.

That decision also means that not all of the will lose their jobs.

But Parkside is still at a disadvantage, Lyttle said, because the school hasn't been given enough time to prepare for next year's change.

To build a cohesive team, he said, all new teachers have to be trained and everyone has to be on the same page, and that hasn't happened yet. The school year ends in June and won't start back up again until late August.

Lyttle said the calendar issue still isn't fully resolved because, as assistant principal, it is his job to complete the schedule for Parkside. With the district's calendar just being finalized, he is months behind his own timeline to complete the school's calendar.

Bottom line, Addiego and Lyttle said: The process to move the sixth graders was handled poorly and, if there weren't impediments put in place by district, the transition could have turned out a lot smoother.

"Can we do it?" Lyttle said. "It depends on what the board says. But it's not going to be the prettiest of programs on the planet."

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