School Closures

This past Thursday, I attended a parent briefing with Eric Mar and Mark Sanchez concerning the issues of school closure. Kim Knox has her usual blow-by-blow account of the meeting and I've asked her if I could post it here, but in the meantime here's my executive summary.

There was nothing much more said than we've already heard. A few JBBP parents were saying they're trying to get into Feinstein. Eric Mar has received a lot of angry emails from JBBP parents expressing many things in not so kind ways. My impression from that evening and other meetings with parents from JBBP is that JBBP will be devastated. No one from JBBP seems to want to send their kids to Rosa Parks and the main argument isn't the quality of the school, it's the huge distance.

There was also the discussion about the programs that are being moved no longer guaranteed to exist as was indicated at the Board meetings discussing closure. Lots of unhappy parents there.

The was also displeasure/concern about the lack of support from The District in the actual merger process, though its still early and I've personally seen District people assisting the site councils with the mergers.

There was unanimous agreement, with some skepticism, that the proposed CAC will have a great impact on future closure/merger issues. Sandra Halladey made a great point that the Student Assignment CAC has done a lot of work in this area and that should not be wasted and I took that to heart and will make sure it isn't.

There was also agreement that The District needs to help schools market
themselves better to prevent further closures.

It was good for the parents to get together though and hopefully more will come from it.