West Sonoma County high school consolidation faces stiff opposition from the start

The newly approved consolidation of El Molino High School and Analy High School slated for the fall in west Sonoma County has put Diego Padilla and hundreds of his peers at an uncomfortable crossroads.

Padilla, an El Molino sophomore who has spent more time in online classes than on the Forestville campus because of the COVID-19 pandemic, already knows several of his friends won’t be joining him if he stays in his district and heads to the Analy campus in Sebastopol — as envisioned under the disputed merger advanced by district trustees Wednesday night.

“I’m really upset about it,” said Padilla, 15. His friends have mentioned transferring to high schools in the Piner-Olivet or Santa Rosa school districts, he said.

Families from Forestville and the broader El Molino High community have been forced into a similar reckoning after the 3-2 vote by the West Sonoma County Union High School District board in favor of consolidation.

The unpopular move is meant to address an expanding, multimillion-dollar hole in the district’s budget — one that won’t be filled by extra tax money after west county voters this month sunk two measures that would have aided school finances and put off consolidation up to two years.

Now it must move forward, a majority of trustees decided Wednesday over protests, and fast, in order to be completed by the fall school calendar. However, opposition looks to be equally swift and determined to stall if not block the move.

Within hours of the board’s vote at about 10 p.m., leading voices in the campaign to save El Molino had begun laying plans to fight the outcome, vowing to launch recall campaigns against trustees and even threatening to claw back voter-approved bond spending that helps pay for campus upgrades in the sprawling district.

“We’re not going to stop fighting until we have what these kids deserve,” said Gillian Hayes, a mother of three — an El Molino graduate, a junior set to finish in 2022 and a 6-year-old whom she hoped would attend the school. She and a group of other west county residents are organizing what she called a “four-pronged approach” to both dispute consolidation and hold board members accountable for what the families say are inequitable impacts on students from the school district’s more rural reaches.

District officials continue to acknowledge the extent of the distress that families feel about the idea of such a quick process to consolidate. El Molino, which has occupied the campus on Covey Lane in Forestville for 57 years, will be replaced with Laguna High, the district’s existing continuation school, and administrative offices.

The combined school on the Analy campus will likely play host to about 1,700 students, including more than 500 from El Molino and slightly less than 1,200 from Analy, which has operated since 1908. Space left vacated on the Laguna campus, which is separated by Taft Street from the larger school, will help accommodate the influx of students, requiring no addition of modular classrooms.

Board members Angie Lewis and Julie Aiello, who voted against consolidation, expressed a desire to explore other options before sealing El Molino’s fate.

"I’m very concerned with the impact it will have if we do not consolidate in a way that brings both campuses together and develops a united identity,“ Aiello said. “I don’t understand how that can be done by next fall.”

The three board members who voted in favor of the proposal — President Kellie Noe, Vice President Jeanne Fernandes and Laurie Fadave — also lamented the difficulty of their decision, but said consolidation shouldn’t be delayed any longer.

Fadave suggested the community “build together what we’ve got rather than thinking of it as … losing something in the process.”

“Kind of changing the way we’re thinking about this and move on in a positive way,” she said.

But some parents, including Hayes, were unimpressed.

“We gave them the chance to do the right thing,” she said. “But they didn’t do the right thing.”

A 19-member superintendent budget committee had explored and offered alternatives to deal in the next school year with the mounting deficit, which is expected to reach $2 million by the 2022-23 school year. Chief Business Officer Jeff Ogston presented the committee’s findings to the board before its vote. Most popular, after consolidation, was going from a seven-period to a six-period day in the fall.

Wednesday’s meeting was the board’s first since both Measure A and Measure B failed to garner a two-thirds majority vote in the March 2 special election taking in much of west county. Since both tax measures were designed to bring in new revenue to the school district, the school board had previously agreed to delay consolidation by a year if at least one of them passed, and two years if both passed.

Jeanne Broome, who sits on the school board as a student representative for El Molino High School, said Forestville saw “a lot of tears cried” when the measures did not pass.

Families opposed to consolidation turned out Wednesday to plead with the school board to choose the six-period day and allow another year before combining the schools.

Superintendent Toni Beal compared the community reaction in the wake of Wednesday’s decision to stages of grief.

“It’s a tremendous loss for the community and for the school district,” she said. “It takes a little bit of time for people to process all of their feelings.”

But for Hayes, an assistant city manager for the city of Vallejo, her reaction pivoted quickly to plans for resistance.

“We are hitting the ground running,” she said of those bound to prevent consolidation. “I don’t think they understood what they were up against.”

Conversations with lawyers have already begun. Hayes is vice president of the El Molino Boosters and she and President Leslie McCormick are overseeing a flood of donations toward a fund to support legal challenges. Hayes declined to discuss possible paths in detail, but said the fundraiser had garnered at least $13,000 within 12 hours.

“That right there is what our community is like,” McCormick said. “It’s filled with people who just really love our school and they just wanted to see us succeed.”

Additionally, the group, 1,500 of whom coordinate through a Facebook page called Keep Our Lions Roaring, is again picking up a recall petition targeting the board majority. It had previously started petitions last fall to recall both Beal and Fernandes, who was then the board president. The parents dropped the effort after the school board in December agreed to place Measure A, a parcel tax, on the March ballot.

The renewed recall effort is aimed at all three board members who voted for the consolidation: Fernandes, Noe and Fadave, who joined the board in December. In the West Sonoma County Union High School District, it’s likely that a recall question would need signatures from about 20% of registered voters to reach the ballot.

The parents also have their eye on asking voters to repeal both an existing $79 parcel tax passed in 2020 to support teacher salaries and the remaining, unspent money from a $91 million bond measure passed in 2018.

“We feel that if (El Molino) is going to be closed, then the district doesn’t need as much money as they ask for,” Hayes said. The bond measure was passed with the goal of being used at all three campuses, and parents fear the rest of the money will be put only toward the Analy campus, though officials have not stated so.

If the legal challenges fail and donations are left over, McCormick said, the boosters club will put remaining funds toward a scholarship for a student from the rural portion of the district.

Beal, who was unaware of the details of the parents’ plans Thursday, expressed optimism about the coming months as planning continues. A district unity committee, scheduled to meet for the second time on March 15, will help oversee the renaming of the combined campus in Sebastopol and selection of the new mascot, she said.

“Our goal is to bring together the students, teachers, staff and community,” she said. “What I'm hopeful (about) is once people process their feelings and we address some of their concerns as far as what consolidation will look like, that people will continue to attend West Sonoma County Union High School District.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kaylee Tornay at 707-521-5250 or kaylee.tornay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ka_tornay.