Last night the school board unanimously approved changing our elementary school boundaries. As I’ve written in earlier posts, this is a change that has been discussed for a number of years, and the Board made it a priority to complete this year. It was a complex problem and an involved process, but I’m confident that we made the best decision to balance enrollment and mitigate the likelihood of school waiting lists, while at the same time preserving the concept of neighborhood schools.
Dr. Baker deserves a lot of credit for working tirelessly through this process, which is difficult and fuels passionate debate all around. He conducted numerous community meetings and worked the plan so as to take into account feedback but also working within our goals and constraints. The plan as originally proposed has been modified as follows:
- Some streets within Devonshire canyon will remain in the Arundel zone
- We added some streets within the current White Oaks area to now be in the Brittan Acres zone
- For homes east of El Camino, only homes at Holly Street and north will move to the Arundel zone
- We moved some parts of the Alameda to the Heather zone
This plan significantly increases the footprint of Heather, while materially shrinks that of White Oaks. It also gives some relief to the likelihood of oversubsciption at Arundel. The link to the Final Approved Planl is here. Note that these street assignments still need to be updated on the District web site.
One thing that’s worth repeating is that these changes do not affect current students or their siblings who will attend elementary school at the same time. No students are being moved in this plan — the zones will apply only to new families, so therefore the changes will effectively be implemented over the next 5-7 years.
On a related note, the Board also unanimously approved a new document outlining the “preferences” for enrollment in any school. These preferences are essentially, with only minor modifications, a codification of past practice, such as giving enrollment preference to siblings in school, etc.
Lastly, boundary changes are certainly not a panacea for enrollment issues. It is a crucial piece of the puzzle, but still a single piece. We still need to look at Middle School capacity and enrollment, potentially addding capacity at some schools, looking at transportation options, and maybe even thinking how we would add a school in the Laureola area. Some of these ideas may take years, but they’re definitely worth pursuing!
Thank you again to Dr. Baker, my fellow board members, District staff, and members of the enrollment committe for all of the time and hard work that went into making these proposals. And also thanks to the community who attended the town hall meetings and gave their input, as that was extremely valuable. Of course no change is perfect nor does everyone consider it better for them, but it’s clear that this community broadly supported this, understands that all of our schools are excellent, and really came together for the good of the whole District and all of its students!
