School Board Notes 12.06.05

School Board Notes 12.06.05
By Nicole Achs Freeling
GreatSchools.net Correspondent

• Treasure Island to close in January
• Staff suggests mergers for several schools on list
• Financial benefit of closures considered

In two back-to-back meetings packed with concerned parents and community members, the BOE voted to close Treasure Island Elementary effective this January and reviewed presentations made by staff for a raft of further closures and consolidations.

Unlike the presentation given to the board a month ago, which identified schools for closure based solely on two criteria -- absolute enrollment and enrollment versus capacity -- this presentation analyzed the original 19 closure candidates based on host of additional criteria such as ten-year enrollment trends, total requests for enrollment, and API scores and improvement. It also looked at financial savings from closing individual sites.

Staff made recommendations for several mergers which could be an alternative to closure for up to 11 of the schools on the list. Meanwhile, speakers stood in line for a over an hour to address the board, many making impassioned pleas for the district to keep their children's schools open.

Treasure Island school to close in January

The board voted unanimously to close Treasure Island Elementary by January 16 of next year, just over a month from now. While the district had been considering closing the school for financial reasons, the move for sudden closure had to do with concerns about safety at the school, according to Commissioner Sara Lipson. "Treasure Island has a significant number of students that need extra help and support and we were not able to provide that at that location," Lipson said after the meeting. Treasure Island includes a lot of facilities for at-risk youth as well as homeless and formerly homeless youth. Once students from other parts of town were no longer being bused to Treasure Island, "it became a very segmented school," Lipson said.

With a total enrollment of 88, the school is operating at only 15 percent of capacity.

Students at Treasure Island Elementary will be assigned to one of the following schools, to which there will be school bus transportation provided:

• Alvarado
• John Muir
• Leonard Flynn
• Redding
• Spring Valley
• Starr King
• Tenderloin

Should families be unhappy with their reassignment, they will be provided a list of other schools with openings and a transition counselor will work with them to find another placement.

Treasure Island parents expressed two chief concerns: that they were unfamiliar with the schools to which their children might be reassigned and that they were worried about the safety of young children being bused so far from home. "There is nothing worse at 6:30 in the morning when its dark and raining than driving a school bus across the (Bay) Bridge," Brock Estess, vice chair of the bus drivers union, told the board. "The wind will literally pick it up and move you across the lanes. We need a bus monitor to deal with the kids so the driver can deal with the driving." According to the district's transportation director, the district has not had bus monitors since 1972.

Staff suggests mergers for several schools on the list

With the goal of merging schools when possible rather than closing them, district staff suggested eight schools which could be moved or absorbed into similar programs at a nearby location. The savings from the mergers was estimated at about $2.2 million.

Suggested mergers were:

• Daniel Webster and Starr King at Starr King site
• John Swett and John Muir at John Muir site
• ISA and Enola Maxwell at Enola Maxwell site
• Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Program West at either Cabrillo or Rosa Parks
• New Traditions and Grattan at Grattan Site
• Willie L. Brown and Gloria R. Davis at Gloria R. Davis site

Suggested relocations were:

• Newcomer School, Everett and Francisco newcomer programs, or only Newcomer School, relocated to current Edison charter school site.
• Co-location of Aim High and June Jordan at Luther Burbank Middle School, with closing of Luther Burbank

Commissioner Mark Sanchez had asked staff earlier to evaluate how much the district could save by relocating SOTA. Although staff made no recommendations as to alternate locations for the school, it did present figures showing that leasing the current McAteer site could generate $1.7 to $2.5 million a year for the district and $16.8 to $25.1 million over ten years.

The staff also presented the board with a list which assigned points based on the degree to which a school met criteria for closure. Those schools with the lowest points are those which meet the most criteria for closure.

The point ratings were as follows:

Enola Maxwell	17
Treasure Island	22
Gloria R. Davis	22
Willie L. Brown	31
Malcolm X	37
Rosa Parks	48
Luther Burbank	53
John Swett	56
Chinese Education Center	62
Newcomer	64
John Muir	67
Aim High	72
Starr King	75
Jose Ortega	72
Cabrillo	90
New Traditions	91
Sheridan	102
June Jordan	102
McKinley	122

However, board members expressed considerations not factored into the point system, such as the fact that the schools on the list seemed to be predominantly east-side schools with large African-American populations. Board members have said they don't want any single community, district or racial group to be disproportionately affected by the closings.

To that end, Lipson asked that George Peabody Elementary, which is not currently on the list, be considered for closure. It is a west side school with lower enrollment than surrounding schools.

Financial benefit of closures considered

Enrollment has slid steadily for the last five years, but the district only began closing schools last year. "It's going to be real tough to fix all this in one year," said Commissioner Norman Yee, who chaired the meeting.

Just how many schools will the district need to close? That is a difficult number to know, board members have said, since the district will not have its final budget numbers for next year until January, by which point closure decisions will have already been made. However, because the district receives per-student funds for next year based on its enrollment this year, it does know it will get $5 million less in the 06/07 budget.

Last year's closings of five schools resulting in a savings of $1.5 million in unrestricted general funds, said Commissioner Jill Wynns. "All the potential mergers and all the potential closures and all the potential savings from moving schools together amounts to about $4.6 million. That doesn't mean we want to adopt all these things, but that gives you some idea of what we're looking at here."

Sanchez privately said the district could be looking at double digits in terms of closure. "I'm prepared to close 10 to 15 of them. I think we have to face the facts."

Were the board to adopt all the mergers, moves and closures suggested by staff, the total savings, including unrestricted funds, STAR funds and site-based restricted general funds, would be $8.4 million, according to district estimates.

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