In a victory for some concerned parents, the Bolinas-Stinson Union School District board voted unanimously on Tuesday to keep first and second graders at the Stinson Beach campus next fall, abandoning an idea to move them to Bolinas that had sparked concerns.
“I called every parent in next year’s first and second grades, reached everyone but one, and only one parent wasn’t for [keeping the grades in Stinson]. The support was just overwhelming,” board member Bob Demmerle said at Tuesday’s board meeting.
Staff had considered the move from the Stinson campus, where the 4-year-old preschool is slated to open next year, possibly straining facilities. Though some board members were on the fence over whether it was their role to vote on such matters, protests by parents who worried about a move’s impacts ultimately led them to weigh in.
The school population—with 105 students projected for next year—will now be split fairly evenly between the two campuses. (The administration may add a new bathroom at the Stinson campus over the summer, and spruce up a cottage for use as a classroom.)
Pending a formal vote next week, the board will also likely support new staff-proposed grade combinations in the 2017-2018 school year. The kindergarten class—which, with 20 projected students, will be one of the biggest grades next year—will stand alone, while grades one and two, three and four, five and six, and seven and eight will be combined.
That’s a change from this year, which combined kindergarten and first, fourth and fifth, and sixth through eighth, but had second and third graders in individual classes. Before that, grades were mostly separate, with the exception of six through eight, which have been combined for the past eight years.
“We were finding that class sizes of six, seven and eight [students] weren’t getting the kind of interaction…that we’re looking for,” Principal Jason Richardson said at a meeting earlier this month. “We think the combinations will create a better dynamic throughout the school.”
Yet some parents of third and fourth grade students are unhappy with the change, arguing that third grade is a key year for learning and that the focus should be on their academics and social experience, rather than on balancing the school at large. Heather Clapp, the mother of a current third grader, said the class is “an especially strong unit” already, and worried that teachers may not have experience handling multi-grade classes. “We know our children best,” she said.
But second grade teacher Lauren Pollack assured parents that staff “looked at every single kid and the dynamics.” A class with one girl and another with one boy will be combined, as will an energetic class with a mellow class, she said. “We came up with what we thought was the best for the most students,” she emphasized.
The class configurations have been months in the making, and were chosen from seven scenarios staff evaluated. But after the burst of concern in recent weeks, Ms. Pollack questioned the proposal. On Tuesday, she said she felt like “the parents are, in a way, our customers, and I do think it’s important to keep our customers happy if it’s possible to provide an equal education one way or the other. I wish we had gotten parent input earlier.”
Meanwhile, multiple teachers, board members and parents expressed frustration at how much time staff spent deliberating over the configurations, especially as they will continue to be reevaluated on a yearly basis. “This process comes at the cost of our competency in teaching the kids,” said the district’s technology specialist, Kevin Pederson. “Especially if we are switching what grades we teach every year, there’s a cost of devoting so much time to the process. Instead, our focus needs to be on the academics.”
This article was clarifed and corrected on May 23.