Dozens of parents from Marguerite Montgomery Elementary attended Thursday night’s meeting of the Davis school board, expressing concern about their school.

The concerns focused on the difficulty of running classroom programs that simultaneously serve a significant percentage of students identified as English Learners and students participating in free- or reduced-price meal programs (upwards of 40 percent, based on modest family income) as well as other students from more affluent households.

Montgomery Elementary has been ranked by the California Department of Education as a “high achieving” school, with an state Academic Performance Index ranking greater than 800 (out of a possible 1,000 points) for multiple years in a row. But Montgomery Elementary has also been in Program Improvement under the much-criticized federal No Child Left Behind program for several years, because some student subgroups are not scoring high enough to meet the steeply escalating federal benchmarks.

Adrienne Meredith, chairperson of the Montgomery school site council, said, “We have wonderful teachers. But she added that those teachers are “presently not able to provide an educational experience to all of our students in the manner that exists in other Davis schools.”

“People are leaving,” Meredith warned. “Enrollment is declining, and appears to be falling off a cliff in the traditional program.”

Montgomery Elementary hosts  traditional classroom programs in grades K-6, as well as classes in the popular Spanish Immersion program in grades K-3. Montgomery parents told the school board that this has resulted in an outflow of students transferring elsewhere in the fourth grade, as some students move to César Chávez Elementary to continue in Spanish Immersion, while other students enter GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) classes at other elementary schools.

Parent Sarah Neville Morgan spoke of “the pressure of fourth-grade migration” that has led some families to transfer younger siblings.

Parent Trish Bosco told the trustees they will find that Montgomery Elementary’s enrollment is now “splintered, depleted, unbalanced.” She supported the idea of merging the enrollment of the two South Davis elementary schools (Marguerite Montgomery Elementary and Pioneer Elementary) in a broader “partnership,” with one campus serving grades K-3, and another serving grades 4-6.

Parent Christian Renaudin spoke of the “constant GATE transfer” and the “high turnover” of principals and teachers. “People are voting with their transfers,” he warned.

Parent Allesandra Frizzi said, “You are asking the teachers to achieve too much.”

Janet Boulware, president of the Davis Bridge Foundation (which has served lower-achieving students at Montgomery Elementary and other schools in the Davis district for several years) told the trustees, “I have been at Montgomery Elementary for eight years. I’ve seen this coming. Others have seen this coming. This isn’t the only school where this is coming. I want you to be keenly attuned to what people are saying.”

Boulware added pointedly that “This is not the fault of English Learner families” — and that remark drew applause from the Montgomery Elementary families present. “Let’s work together, and talk about how we may need to redesign the program. I am at the school every day. I know those teachers are working hard,” Boulware said.

The school board trustees told Superintendent Winfred Roberson and district staff to look into the matter and bring recommendations back to the school board. Trustee Gina Daleiden said that the situation at Montgomery is “exceptionally complicated  … we have a segment of the population where our program is not working.” Trustee Sheila Allen suggested a considering an alternative form of the GATE program at Montgomery, “but we might not be able to do it for this fall,” Allen said.

School board president Richard Harris likewise expressed interest in a new, alternative model for Montgomery, and railed against “that stupid No Child Left Behind (law) that threw us into this program improvement thing . . . but we’re in this spiral (at Montgomery) that we can’t let continue.”

— Reach Jeff Hudson at [email protected] or (530) 747-8055.

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