Wearing red t-shirts, with the school's name - the group approached the podium one by one. Many are worried about the future of the high school's staff. Next year - the district plans to move somewhere between 14 and 18 full time teachers from McLane to other campuses because of declining enrollment.
"They're projecting McLane will have less students," Jeffrey Woods said. "In my 14 years at McLane, they always under-project and then scramble at the end to get teachers there. It's a hindrance because we're not seeing first year teachers go, we're seeing more experienced teachers go."
Daniel Melchor said, "Basically, by moving our best teachers, we're removing the chemistry. So our question is, does the administration care about student-teacher chemistry? Do they care about just placing any teacher in front of us and teaching?"
Meantime, the district says the staff members will be shifted to schools where there is a greater need for teachers and no permanent teacher will lose their job.
Also, at Wednesday night's school board meeting -- trustees selected a name for a new middle school in Southwest Fresno.
The campus will now be called Rutherford "Bud" Gaston Middle School -- in honor of the long-time educator and activist.
Gaston became the first African-American principal at Fresno Unified.
