School Trustees Await Public Input on New Middle School Boundaries

A diagonal line cutting through Novato, roughly from the southwest to the northeast, is the most likely scenario to serve as a new boundary line that dictates which public middle school that students would attend next fall.

A rough-draft plan presented by the consulting firm Total School Solutions received positive reviews from the Board of Trustees on Tuesday night and will receive public input at a 5 p.m. Wednesday meeting.

On March 8, the trustees are expected to render a decision that will determine which school will be serving which areas of the city. Right now they’re leaning toward one that would send kids from , and elementary schools to and kids from , and to .

Kids from , which does not have traditional geographic boundaries and draws students from all over Novato, would be sent to middle schools depending on where they live. , the city’s southernmost school, is being expanded from kindergarten through seventh to a K-8 school starting next fall.

A new middle school boundary is necessary with the January announcement that will be shut down and students will be redistributed to the other two middle schools, Sinaloa and San Jose. The Hill site will reopen as the district’s alternative education center. The new boundary is designed only for the 2011-12 school year; if approved by trustees in April, a comprehensive boundary study of all Novato schools could be finished by the time the following school year comes around.

Trustee Derek Knell emphasized that the new boundary is mostly a geographic one. “It’s going to be impossible to divide this district into zones that are ethnically, racially or socioeconomically even,” he said. “That’s just not possible. I don’t think we’ll be able to do it much more than geographically.”

Two boundary proposals by Total School Solutions were reviewed Tuesday and the trustees were more favorable to one that splits Sinaloa kids from San Jose kids with a line — jagged but mostly diagonal — that follows the following streets:

• Starting on the southern end of Indian Valley Road (near the Presidents neighborhood), going north toward Hill Middle School
• Veering east from Hill to South Novato Boulevard
• Up South Novato Boulevard to Diablo Avenue
• East on Diablo to Redwood Boulevard
• North on Redwood Boulevard through the downtown area
• East over Highway 101 and then north into Rush Creek Preserve

Basically, kids to the west of that border would go to Sinaloa and kids to the east would be sent to San Jose. The populations of the schools for 2011-12 would be 793 at Sinaloa and 705 at San Jose, according to Total School Solutions. The figures do not include students who are at the schools because of intradistrict transfers; Sinaloa has 60-80 kids who attend there but do not live within the school's geographic boundaries set up by the district.

The second option was the same until it got to Atherton Avenue. The 1B plan would have the Sinaloa boundary include kids from the eastern areas off Atherton — between Highway 101 and Bahia Lane — as well as all Bahia kids. Kids from east of Bahia Lane, including the rural neighborhoods off H Lane, School Road, Green Point and Black Point, would end up at San Jose Middle School.

Under the 1B plan, Sinaloa's student population would be 828 and San Jose's would be 670.

Representatives from Total School Solutions said kids who live in the northeastern portion of Novato off Atherton would have about the same distance of travel to either Sinaloa or San Jose, roughly 4.5 to 5 miles.

The map is to be available on the school district’s website by about 10 a.m. Wednesday, giving parents the rest of the day to evaluate it and decide whether they want to provide input at the 5 p.m. board meeting.

“I’m happy with 1A for right now, but I’d like to hear from the public tomorrow,” said trustee Debbie Butler. “We’re not going to have a perfect balance, but I think it meetings the needs for what we need right now.”