Divided Sebastopol school board votes to reconfigure schools

After two weeks of soul-searching and sometimes heart-wrenching debate, a split Sebastopol Union School District board voted Thursday night to reconfigure the district’s two schools next year.

The move, prompted by enrollment that has fallen by 60 percent in the past 15 years, will consolidate all kindergartners through fourth-graders at Park Side and fifth-graders through eighth-graders at Brook Haven.

Currently, Park Side is home to a K-5 International Baccalaureate program and Brook Haven has a K-8 school with some ?combined-age classes.

Superintendent Linda Irving proposed the reconfiguration as a way to balance class sizes and create more effective learning environments for the district’s 508 students.

At a time when parents have more choices and a variety of educational programs to choose from for their children, Sebastopol Union enrollment has declined steadily.

From 2000, when there were 1,262 students, just over half remained by 2013, when enrollment was 650 students. In 2011, the district closed Pine Crest school and turned Brook Haven into a K-8.

With continued deficit spending, Irving said the district needed to become more efficient with the students that remained - and potentially attract new families who have chosen other schools for their children.

Following a 3-2 vote, a handful of parents who opposed the decision abruptly left the meeting. Another hugged Brook Haven Principal Debbie Hanks, both of whom were near tears.

“There are a lot of emotions,” Hanks said. “I care deeply about all my families and they walked out.”

“That’s why I’m crying, too,” said a parent in the audience.

Board members Deborah Drehmel, Bob Hynes and Olivia Leon voted to move ahead with Irving’s and a 12-person committee’s recommendation. Board President Debbie Ramirez and board member Mac Thompson voted no, saying they wanted more time for the district, parents and students to adjust to the new configuration.

A few parents have said they would move their children if the plan went ahead, while others applauded the new structure as a way to keep groups of classmates together as they advance in school.

Many teachers, too, supported the move as a way to be more efficient, making collaboration easier with other classes of the same grade on the same campus.

Parent Megan Sorensen, also teary after the vote, said she has felt a division in the district with the two schools and their separate identities, a feeling she said the reconfiguration discussion deepened. She backed teachers who embraced the plan as a way to collaborate better to create lesson plans.

“If they feel they can be better educators, I support them in that,” she said.

District administrators will now begin working on a comprehensive programming plan for the new configuration to take effect next fall.

You can reach Staff Writer Lori A. Carter at 521-5470 or lori.carter@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @loriacarter.