School District Decides on New Middle School Boundaries

Following emotional appeals by parents, the Board of Trustees on Saturday delineated a new one-year boundary to decide where middle school students in the city will attend school.

With a unanimous 7-0 vote, the new diagonal line that cuts across the city dictates that all middle school students on the east side of Highway 101 in Novato will be sent to for next school year unless they are within the district to go to the new kindergarten-through-eighth-grade Hamilton Meadow Park School.

The majority of kids in the in the Indian Valley and Center Road neighborhoods will be sent to , the trustees decided.

The board followed a recommendation from the consultancy firm Total School Solutions as well as from Supertintendent Jan La Torre-Derby. The decision was brought forth by a previous board decision to close, the one closest to the downtown area. The Hill facility will reopen next fall as an alternative education center.

The east side neighborhoods now in the San Jose area include residents around Olive School, Bahia, Bugeia Lane, Atherton Avenue, H Lane, Green Point and Black Point. Closer to downtown, it also includes the areas between Redwood Boulevard and Highway 101 in Old Town plus those between Novato Boulevard and 101 across from the Nave shopping center.

The west neighborhood now in the Sinaloa drawing area includes all of the Old Town area west of Redwood Boulevard and Novato Boulevard down to the Nave shopping center. The border follows Hill Road and the cuts south along the west edge of the Presidents neighborhood. Areas near Lu Sutton Elementary and rural Indian Valley will be Sinaloa drawing areas.

For a full map, go to the district’s website, download the March 12 board packet and look for the map listed as Option 1A-1.

Requests for intradistrict transfers originally were due March 13, but the deadline has been extended one week to accommodate those affected by the board’s decision Saturday. Before the vote, Derby reiterated that requests for intradistrict transfers from parents of Hill Middle School sixth- and seventh-graders and their siblings would receive priority status and be handled by the school district office rather than the individual schools. The trustees agreed and adopted that language as part of the motion they approved.

Despite the 8 a.m. start time for the meeting — just before the city’s annual youth baseball parade was about to begin through the downtown — the trustees chambers were full for the special session. The board had hoped to make a decision at its March 8 meeting, but then asked Total School Solutions for several new boundary options and the demographic figures that go with them.

Derby explained that all the other options were presented because the district was asked by the public to provide more choices.

“All the choices came forward because of the questions and people’s input and the board trying to please everybody,” Derby said. “No one up here wants anybody to be upset, but people were asking and asking and asking. … There’s no conspiracy.”

Trustee Cindi Clinton later addressed those who wondered why it took more than two months to make a decision on the boundaries by saying the state would have made a decision in one day and not listened to any public comment.

Before the vote, several parents who live in the and Indian Valley areas expressed dismay at the option of sending their kids to San Jose, 3-4 miles away on busy surface streets, rather than Sinaloa, less than a mile away on less-busy streets.

One parent said sending her child across town would result it 2,250 miles of extra driving per school year. Another estimated the extra gas costs of driving his child to school at $800 per year with gas at $4 per gallon.

Jennifer Treppa, a former NUSD trustee who has children in the district, reminded those parents who complained about neighborhoods being divided by the new boundaries that Hill Middle School and Lu Sutton kids have been split for years as they move on to their next schools.

Clinton described the new boundary process as “silly” as she wrapped up her thoughts on the past two months of push and pull. She said her wish was to rewind and not close Hill — a comment that drew some cheers — or at least do it after a comprehensive boundary study for all schools could take place. But she said the district was facing an urgent budgetary dilemma that forced the closure of one middle school, saving the district about $500,000 per year.

“I don’t know how we could go backwards,” she said. “I don’t know how you can put the cat back in the bag. But unfortunately it’s not an option right now.”

Trustee Debbie Butler added, “We needed to hash it out, but now we need to get to a decision. … I do think we need to be flexible with the intradistrict transfers. We want to make it work for you and make it best for your child.”