Best (?) (Non)Use of Schools Task Force

The Davis School Board are poor planners.

The district demographer told them 5 years ago that the elementary school population was about to start declining. This is primarily because there have been no new developments in town for several years.

Nevertheless, they decided to build a new elementary school. Which is now sitting empty. Needless to say, the people who live in that neighborhood really, really, really want their school open. But the district doesn't have enough students, or money (in CA the money follows the student and you get only a certain amount per child, so if there are fewer kids there is less $ to fund the district), to operate nine schools; we have enough to run about 7 or 8, maybe.

So the school board created something called the Best Uses of Schools Task Force to survey the problem and provide the board with some recommendations about what to do.

There looks to be a significant chance that our neighborhood school where Owen is in kindergarten, Valley Oak, will close. It's the oldest school in the district (51 years), in the worst shape, and has the fewest local students, thanks to the fact that most of our neighbors bought their houses in the 1950s or 60s and thus don't have any elementary age kids.

We've been attending the meetings of the task force and providing them with lots of input about what needs to happen if our school closes. Last week one member presented the "8 school option" - in other words, what would happen if one school closes. He suggested 4 possible schools, but Valley Oak looks the most likely. However, we weren't really happy with his option, so I went to talk to him about it and this weekend I did a little map with dots on it to show where the students live to provide him with a little more information. My neighbor brought it to him this morning and they had a long discussion. It sounds like he is amenable to our recommendations.

Valley Oak has special needs because we have the largest percent in the district of kids with low incomes or who are English language learners. Many of the kids live quite near the school and may not have parents with cars (Davis has no school buses) so transportation may be a problem for those kids.

The task force is making its recommendations to the board this fall and whatever happens will probably be decided over the winter, so that Owen would start 2nd grade at another school (if they close Valley Oak). We are doing our best to make sure that the outcomes are good. Worrying about this problem is taking up a lot of our energy.