Schools

School Board Won't Make Boundary Decisions in March

Over 100 community members attend school boundary workshop; more planned.

At a packed meeting Thursday night at , the Board took community input and considered six different options for new school boundaries for over three hours.

The main issue for the board is the goal of creating equal student populations at all four of the K-5 campuses, after Brookside becomes two K-5 campuses, while encouraging walking and biking to school. The problem has been that Upper Brookside sits far back in Sleepy Hollow without enough residents around it to fill the school. This means that in order to maintain even schools sizes, some neighborhoods that are closer to other schools would have to drive past Lower Brookside to get to Upper.

This has made a lot of families upset, even spurring websites like notourneighborhood.com and wewalktowadethomas.com.

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Fairfax families have been particularly upset that some of the Manor areas -- including those near Deer Park -- would be reassigned to Brookside or Wade Thomas in different scenarios. Some blamed the situation on the Fairfax Town Council and Deer Park residents for opposing the reopening of Deer Park as a smaller school last year during the discussion of ways to deal with the enrollment growth.

In one particularly impassioned speech, a Fairfax resident argued that all Fairfax residents should go to the Fairfax school, San Anselmo residents go to San Anselmo schools, and county residents go to the school in unincorporated Marin. That, however, would leave very unevenly sized schools, projections show.

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An added challenge is that Manor houses the MAP program, bringing additional students to Manor.

To expand Manor to a larger school (and leave Upper Brookside smaller) would cost approximately $10 million, by rough estimates at the meeting, which would come out of the Measure A funds currently going towards expanding and renovating White Hill.

The board directed consultants to take off the list of possibilities an option that would move MAP to Upper Brookside, which could move the additional students to the less populated campus, but was vehemently opposed by a number of MAP families at the meeting. (Option C at right.)

No board action was taken or voted on, however, because of the vocal opposition to many of the current options. In addition, the board felt they couldn't yet have a traffic study done, because there were still too many options on the table for a detailed traffic study. There is even the possibility that the decision will not be made in time for the upcoming school year, but could be postponed.

The board will not be making a decision by their March 25 deadline. They will be holding more community meetings, likely one at each campus, though dates have not yet been set.

You can see all the scenarios the board is currently considering, with student projections, at right.


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