Santa Rosa school board sets priorities for charter school admissions

Santa Rosa school board members Wednesday reaffirmed a legally required push to offer low-income children more seats in charter schools, but a majority also favored giving first preference for siblings of current and some past charter students.

The board voted unanimously for a policy that seeks to boost enrollment of low-income students at four district charters. The officials then voted 5-2 to direct staff to develop a policy that essentially would allow charters to give top preference to siblings whose brothers or sisters attended a charter or went on to attend the charter’s neighborhood middle or high school.

The latter action would most benefit families at Santa Rosa Accelerated Charter School, which instructs only fifth- and sixth-graders. In response to concerns raised by parents there, district staff had proposed expanding the preference to students whose older siblings were at the charter or attending Rincon Valley Middle School, which shares the same campus.

But board member Bill Carle contended the proposal didn’t go far enough. He envisioned a transportation headache where a southwest Santa Rosa family sends one student to the east side Accelerated Charter and then eventually to nearby Maria Carrillo High School, but has a younger child who can’t get into the charter and attends school across town.

Other members agreed with Carle.

“It worries me that that’s a little too narrow,” board member Frank Pugh said of the original proposal.

President Donna Jeye and board member Laura Gonzalez opposed Carle’s motion. Jeye said the district should increase student diversity and the staff proposal already “goes above and beyond the norm.”

“A lot of school districts don’t make exceptions at all” for siblings seeking to attend charters, Jeye said.

The policies will affect the four charter schools the district manages. Those four schools, known as dependent charters, include the Accelerated Charter, Santa Rosa Charter School for the Arts, Santa Rosa French-American Charter School and Cesar Chavez Language Academy.

Under the policy, siblings will receive the top preference when the number of applicants exceed available slots. But after those students, a lottery would set aside specific slots for children from low-income households - defined as those making up to $44,123 per year for a family of four.

For the charters, 65.5 percent of Cesar Chavez’s students last year met that criteria, as did 30.7 percent at the arts charter and 21.5 percent at the French-American school. But only 2.3 percent of the Accelerated Charter’s students were low income.

Accelerated Charter founding teachers Anna and Steve Williams expressed support for the board action. But if officials truly want to boost diversity at the charter, Anna Williams said the school needs to move to a better location to serve lower-income families.

“We should be in the middle of town to serve those kids,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit

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Editor's note:

Board member Laura Gonzalez?'s name was originally mispelled in this story, it has been corrected above.