The following is a letter written recently by a concerned Rose Garden resident with the proposed campus changes at Hoover Middle School.
To: Fellow Rose Garden Residents
From: Ogden. Lilly
Regarding: Hoover Middle. School
There is a proposal by the San Jose Unified School District that will impact our neighborhood. Downtown College Prep, a charter school, currently occupies the location of the former Hester School, corner of The Alameda and Lenzen, for its high school students. DCP middle school is across the street from San Jose High School. The proposal made by the school district is to move Downtown College Prep (DCP) and move 400 middle school students to Hoover Middle School (two schools on one campus). Hoover, which already has 1,000 students, would then add an additional 400 students. Please read the recent article dated November 13, 2014 in the San Jose Mercury News (Local Section) which indicates Hoover is not performing at high academic standards!
Going into the former Hester location, would be a new “Enrollment Center” of the San Jose School District, which would be within two blocks of the school district located at 8.55 Lenzen Drive. High school students of DCP would be moved to a facility across the street from San Jose High School (where DCP middle school students now occupy) which has approximately 13 less classrooms than Hester.
Here are some negative issues with this proposal:
Health and safety of students. The roads around and leading to Hoover are streets in which there is a lot of normal automobile traffic. Adding a potential 800 new cars on a daily basis to that Hoover traffic pattern will be very difficult for the neighborhood. As recently as 3-4 years ago, a Hoover student was killed in a traffic accident on Park Avenue.
Hoover needs to improve its academics and adding 400 students to the campus creates a lot of uncertainties.
Wouldn’t it be better for the new “Enrollment Center”, targeted for the Hester campus, to be moved to Hoover and leave DCP at its present location? It seems that money could be saved, problems of logistics avoided, i.e. cost of conversion and adaption minimized. Also, it gives the School District an on-.site perspective of life at a middle school.
Clearly, we do not need 1,400 students in a school that is already congested and challenged.
There is a public forum at 855 Lenzen on Thursday at 6:00 p.m. on November 20. Please be there in support of the total Rose Garden Community.
