Schools

School Trustees to Vote on Major Asset Study

If approved, a consulting firm would address Rancho's enrollment setup, transfer policies and facilities recommendations.

The and the debate over the has prompted Novato school trustees to hit the reset button on everything the school district does. A master plan for all public school facilities will be the primary topic of Tuesday night’s board meeting.

The meeting starts at 7 p.m. at the district office, and Superintendent Shalee Cunningham is expected to bring up the master plan at about 8:30 p.m. The trustees are to entertain the idea of contracting out for a study of the master plan that would provide information and recommendations for the 2011-12 school year. Everything from enrollments, school boundaries, demographics, land use agreements, facility analysis and residential projections is to be included in the report.

On Sept. 6, district staff laid out the needs for such a study. Tuesday they are expected to vote on whether to spend no more than $88,450 on a deal with Sacramento-based Jack Schreder & Associates for the job.

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If approved by the trustees, the company would use the latest information systems to analyze data and draw up reports and maps about student population by grade level, ethnicity, socioeconomics and enrollment in special programs for school, according to a report to be presented Tuesday (see attachd PDF). The studies also would address the practices of inter-district and intra-district transfers.

Hill Middle School, the city’s oldest middle school (opened in 1954), and reopened as the district’s alternative education center. Middle schoolers were redistributed to , and .

Find out what's happening in Novatowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

, located in Novato’s Presidents neighborhood not far from Novato High School, is the only non-charter elementary in the district  that has no drawing boundaries for enrollment. Students are accepted to the school via a lottery system. Proponents of Rancho’s system have a "why mess with a good thing?" stance and say nothing could be more fair than a lottery system and point to high test scores that are among the best in Marin County. Detractors of the setup point to district statistics showing an ethnic and socioeconomic imbalance compared to the rest of Novato’s schools and say it would be more fair to turn Rancho back into a neighborhood school with no lottery system.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, facilities coordinator Judge Taylor is scheduled to discuss upgrades to sound systems at and football fields and human resources chief Pam Conklin is to provide an update on staffing and enrollment at all schools.


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