Schools
No More Schools to Close — Yet
But board cautions that more schools will close if Governor's budget proposals are not approved by voters in June, or a parcel tax is not voted in.
Supporters of and elementary schools who packed Tuesday night’s Mt. Diablo school board screamed and cheered when the board voted not close any more schools, dispersing a four-month-old cloud over their heads – for now.
“I just feel joy. I’m elated,” said Yasman Oldham, PTA president of Silverwood. “It’s been a long four months. Now we can concentrate on the school’s book fair and pasta dinners.”
Earlier in the evening, Oldham had held up to the trustees her battered “Save Silverwood” sign and reminded them that the school staff had rallied every week, “including last Friday in the rain.”
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Westwood teacher Kathy Boyd, who has taught at the school for 30 years, said she was elated “not to lose her community. This would have divided us where our roots are. The kids were worried.”
The board’s decision came with a caveat from trustee Sherry Whitmarsh.
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“This will not be the last time we talk about school closures if we lose an additional $25 million [from the state budget],” she said.
Board President Gary Eberhart urged parents to make sure Sacramento does not find it acceptable to take away more school funds “because I don’t know where it will come from. What can we do? We have to get local parcel tax funding. We have to do this so we won’t have any more meetings about what to take away [from our students].”
The vote came after district Superintendant Steven Lawrence recommended against any more school closures. At the Feb. 8 meeting, the board voted to .
Instead, he suggested the board create a school community-based strategic committee to look at its high schools, where district demographics show both a declining and shifting population away from central Contra Costa County and toward Bay Point.
He said he would bring a detailed proposal for the committee to the board in April.
Lawrence’s suggestion came at the end of a fact-packed PowerPoint presentation to answer the board’s many questions on the impacts of closing Glenbrook, consolidating the necessary small high school sites, closing or selling the Willow Creek center and closing the district’s Diablo Day Community School.
The presentation brought a sharp complaint from newly elected trustee Cheryl Hansen about seeing the information in the report for the first time.
“This is the third time I have received information so late. I don’t appreciate surprises,” she said. “It deserves a length of time to reflect on it.”
Lawrence said the district staff had worked all weekend to get data since getting questions from the board at its meeting on Feb. 15.
Closing Glenbrook Middle School means the district is likely to lose much of its School Improvement Grant, said Lawrence. He quoted Deb Sigman, Deputy Superintendent from the California Department of Education, in his presentation, saying that to transfer the SIG funds, the district would have to transfer all sixth-through-eighth graders at Glenbrook to El Dorado Middle School, change its name to Glenbrook and transfer the name and its designated code to the new school. Students at the “new” Glenbrook would be entitled to No Child Left Behind rules, allowing them transportation to another school, if they desired. Transportation funds would be paid by Title 1 money.
The district may be able to retain some of its afterschool enrichment site funding for Glenbrook and Holbrook Elementary, which the board also voted to close Feb. 8, by transferring the funds to the schools where children will be transferred, Lawrence said. However, the state is coming up with new rules about transfers and won’t have them available until later in the spring, Lawrence said. One possibility is to create satellite afterschool sites at the closed Glenbrook and Holbrook campuses.
According to Lawrence’s staff presentation, closing and selling Willow Creek Center would bump more than a dozen school programs and meeting sites, leading the district to have to spend more than $100,000 to rent off-site space.
Trustee Cheryl Hansen disputed that, wondering if the two schools that are to close soon might provide the required meeting space.
“But we haven’t decided what to do with those schools, have we?” said Whitmarsh.
On Jan. 11, Lawrence proposed using the closed Glenbrook campus to create a special needs program to save costs now paid out to private service providers and to provide the Measure C team with office space.
Lawrence also noted that the city would have to rezone the Willow Creek site if it was put up for sale, but city planners told him that could be accomplished by the end of 2011.
Hansen also asked if students at Diablo Day School, which is housed at Willow Creek, could be sent to the County Office of Education’s Golden Gate Community School instead. Diablo Day Community School serves children in grades seven through 12 who have been expelled from the Mt. Diablo district or referred by juvenile probation.
According to the staff report, Golden Gate provides two hours less instruction per day and does not take students with special or intensive educational needs.
Parents of Diablo Day school students urged the trustees not to close the school.
“Diablo Day School was just what my son needed,” said Jennifer Rowe. “Before, he hated school. Now he’s getting A’s, B’s, and C’s.”
Any changes in the necessary small high schools (Prospect in Pleasant Hill, Nueva Vista in Concord, Summit in Concord, Gateway in Bay Point) are likely to be put off until the district completes its strategic policy on high schools, Lawrence said.
