MorganHillTimes.com | Supe's Priority is Clean, Safe and Orderly Learning Environment

Supe's Priority is Clean, Safe and Orderly Learning Environment

Mar 30, 2007
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Spring has arrived and we are well into the second half of our school year. I thought it would be an appropriate time to give the community an update on "what's been happening" in the Morgan Hill Unified School District over the past 20 months and what to expect in the near future.

One of my major objectives as the superintendent is to ensure that there is a learning environment at all of our schools which is not only safe, orderly and clean, but one that is conducive to learning for students, staff and parents. We are making progress, as you will see from the following updates:

1. Security: We now have surveillance cameras for school safety at Sobrato and Live Oak high schools with the middle schools next and elementary schools to follow, as funding becomes available. We also have repaved and rerouted parking lots, and are in the process of installing new, aesthetically pleasing, wrought-iron security fencing. Currently some of our schools do not have telephones in the classroom. That will not be the case when the new school year starts; every classroom is projected to have a telephone.

2. Cleanliness/efficiency: Over the past two years (including the opening of our second high school) we have increased district support staff as follows to assist in keeping our schools well maintained and clean and to be more efficient: reinstated/added seven custodians, one grounds person, one maintenance worker, and one district office receptionist; restored layoff for five clerical employees and a school budget clerk; and added summer support at the district warehouse. We have completed several projects such as landscaping upgrades, new carpet, a fresh coat of exterior paint at many of our schools, new picnic tables, benches and garbage receptacles. We will continue to complete our list of school improvement projects as funding becomes available.

3. Technology: We are also improving access to technology for students, teachers and parents with communication tools such as our automated telephone dialer for outreach to parents, increasing the number of computers in the schools, adding home to school electronic curriculum and upgrading our computer network infrastructure.

4. Construction: Some major projects will be starting soon, such as additional upgrades to Live Oak High School, including a remodeled theater, a refurbished boys' locker room, an outdoor amphitheater, and a safer front entry way into the school. Britton will have a new lunch shelter (trying to avoid the seagulls), new fencing, new girls' locker room and updated boys' locker room. We are also in the planning stages of modernizing Martin Murphy Middle School, which is now over 26 years old.

We have many needs in our school district, but rest assured that the objective of a clean, safe and orderly environment will continue to be a top priority. In my next column, I will discuss some of our academic initiatives.

Dr. Alan Nishino has been superintendent of Morgan Hill Unified School District since June of 2005. Reach him at

201-6000 or Alan.Nishino@mhu.k12.ca.us.