SCUSD votes to close 4 schools

After a marathon meeting this evening the Sac City Unified School Board has voted to close four schools for the upcoming school year. The board decided to spare Mark Hopkins — which had been on the chopping block as of Wednesday — but that school will most likely close after next year. Genesis High School, and Alice Birney, Lisbon, and Thomas Jefferson Elementary schools will close; the district believes this will save $1.5 million.

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Author: CoolDMZ

"X-ray vision to see in between / Where's my kimono and my time machine?"

One thought on “SCUSD votes to close 4 schools”

  1. An alternative to school closing is to place funding where learning happens – at the level of the local school. With per student budgeting each site would receive about $9,420 for each student (average per student funding in 07-08). This would cover every existing site budget with plenty left over for which the central office could creatively compete through quality support services.

    School sites need to be focused on addressing the diverse challenges of our students and our future. Small neighborhood schools have a research established ability to provide important individual attention and to nurture crucial resiliency factors. These quality aspects save the public millions in future social costs and make us millions in contributions to the economy as well as even more important contributions to good citizenship.

    Misinformation stated recently by SCUSD management:

    Closures are necessary to address budget shortfalls: SCUSD’s income has increased every year except for one slight dip one year and, with the federal stimulus, will continue to grow. Spending has always grown and is projected by management to be higher than last year by 25 million by year’s end. This is not accurate but shows both there poor bookkeeping and lack of focus on making real cuts away from the classroom.

    Closures are needed due to a 10 year decline in enrollment: SCUSD’s own medium range projections state that we will see the beginning of a 10 year increase in elementary enrollment starting in 2008-09. The projection was for 26,327 and at October CBED count we were at 26,357. The projection is for a return to 1999-00 levels by 2014-15.

    leocauchon@netscape.net

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