Feb 3, 2004

Reader spearheads drive for troops in Iraq

Editor,
My name is Julie DeMaria, and I started a drive for the troops last March. I am, once again, asking my neighbors in the Dry Creek area to help me send goods to the troops. However, with your help, I believe that we can make it a Willow Glen drive.

Why is this important? So many things have happened in the last year.
Through our drive, my sister Kim Guzman,who also lives in Willow Glen, started another drive through the San Jose Police Department. We sent care packages to the 21 San Jose Police Officers that were deployed and to many in their units.

Many officers have returned, but some remain, and many of the officers at the SJPD live in Willow Glen. I have received dozens of letters from the troops with amazing stories. Schools, scout groups, churches and other organizations got involved, and we managed to ship over 31,000 pounds of goods from April through January.

Our efforts have led to romances between letter writers, coincidental meetings between letter writers and the recipients of a care package that happened to be the son of a long lost childhood friend, and so forth. They are wonderful stories, all as a result of a neighborhood drive that “blossomed.” With over 100,000 service members in Iraq, and over 10,000 still in Afghanistan, we still have work to do.

I will be hand delivering about 400 letters to my neighbors this week. Our drive will be from Jan. 15 through Valentines Day on Feb. 14, to benefit “Operation Care and Comfort” military care package program (through the Santa Clara Valley Red Cross). You can read about the program at www.santaclaravalley.redcross.org. The program is run by four volunteers (I am one) and is self-funded. If you want to reach me, please call me at (408) 373-8635 or e-mail me at troopsupport@pacbell.net.

Julie DeMaria

Teacher pleads: Don’t cut the programs!

Editor,
My name is Jan Wilson and I am a Resource Specialist (special education teacher) at Erikson Academy. Our school is one of the three that the San Jose Unified School District has recommended for closure. The district has said that programs will not be cut if schools are closed.  I disagree.  We have several specialized programs at Erikson that will be dismantled if we are closed.

For the past nine years, Erikson has operated a school-wide multi-aged classroom environment utilizing a team teaching model. Many students may have the same team of teachers for two years in a row. The teachers work together to plan appropriate curriculum for their students based on their academic needs.  For example, in the multi-aged third/fourth grade classrooms, students are grouped for math instruction according to their math skill levels.

Eight years ago, we began to look at the delivery of special education services in a different way.  Using the school’s culture of collaboration, we developed a team approach for the resource specialist program.  With this approach, I plan together with my students, parents and teachers to decide when I will pull the child out of the classroom and when I will work within the classroom. Erikson is one of the few elementary schools in the district that is using this collaborative model of push in/pull out services.  It takes years to build such a program and make it work.  More important, it works because we trust each other.

The frustrating part of this entire school closure issue is that last year the district hired an outside consultant to study San Jose Unified’s Special Education program, evaluate what is working, and make recommendations as needed. The consultant recommended that the district explore a collaborative push-in model of special education services - exactly like the one at Erikson.

I recently sent a letter to district administrators letting them know that Erikson already has such a program in place and that we would be more than happy to help other schools develop a similar program to meet their sites’ needs.  Then the district decided to recommend closing Erikson, eliminating this unique model of Special Education services.
As our principal recently said,  “Take any one of these teachers and put them at another school and you will have one more good teacher at that school. Keep them together and they will be powerful and persuasive leaders and role models for others.”

I realize that Erikson is a small school with a declining enrollment, and according to the district could be easily consolidated. But it would be a shame to cut our model educational programs just because it is easier to crunch numbers.

Jan Wilson