By the end of June, the Lagunitas School District will decide whether to combine its two elementary programs, a fraught move meant to respond to declining enrollment and the need to appeal to new families.
Yet parents, teachers and administrators are split over the idea of merging the school’s Montessori and Open Classroom programs. At a late May forum and a special board meeting last week, some parents exhorted the board to fuse or streamline the shrinking programs as early as next year, while supporters of the Open Classroom pushed back, calling for the decision to at least be slowed down.
Ultimately the board will decide whether to combine the programs, keep them separate or strike a compromise that could involve consolidating the two programs on one campus, combining their kindergarten classes, or sharing programs like art and music.
The debate is defined by concerns over instability as the school prepares to lose more teachers, students and, possibly, its superintendent. At its heart is a divide between seasoned Lagunitas community members who view the school as a paragon of parent choice and newer parents who don’t feel loyal to either program, in part because both Open Classroom and Montessori were forced to shed some of their distinctive qualities during Covid.
“I can see how if someone is looking at us now and missed out on the pre-Covid, fully-blooming Open Classroom, wanting to maintain our programs as separate could seem mystifying at best, and divisive at worst,” said Arielle Ikeda, the school library aide, at a board meeting last Tuesday. Ms. Ikeda remains committed to the progressive program, and told the board to take its time with any decision, adding: “If we have more upheaval, we’re just going to lose more families.”
Covid shook Lagunitas at a time when declining enrollment was already creating fissures in the school community. For Open Classroom kids, who are allowed to make spontaneous choices to make art or play outdoors during the school day, distance learning was an especially inadequate replacement for in-person school. Parents, who normally volunteer in the classroom, couldn’t be as involved, and some were frustrated as the district carefully mulled returning to in-person classes, eventually becoming the last elementary school in the county to welcome students back last March.
A subsequent schism over the dismissal of Montessori teacher Jill Conroy heightened some families’ perception of poor communication, and both factors drove transfers to the Ross Valley Charter School in Fairfax, where Ms. Conroy now teaches.
The transition to the 2022-2023 academic year is bringing even more challenges. District Superintendent John Carroll may be voted in as the county’s superintendent of schools, leaving a potentially vacant leadership role soon after the district’s chief business officer, Jeff Lippstreu, died unexpectedly in April. Three elementary teachers—Peter Eldredge and Olga Khaykin from the Open Classroom and Pauline Hope from Montessori—are resigning, and another, Montessori teacher Alex Perry, will go on maternity leave next year.
Lagunitas School has shrunk by 30 percent since before the pandemic, with the starkest decline in the Open Classroom. In the school year before the pandemic, 85 kids were enrolled in the program. Next year, the district projects just 34 kids, and their uneven age distribution troubles some parents.
Some of these worries, and the threat of more student departures, were on display when more than 80 people packed the school’s multipurpose room to discuss the program structure on May 23. The meeting, facilitated by social worker Dana Pepp, drew criticism from teachers and longtime parents who felt drowned out by newer parents interested in merging the programs.
“It felt like we were being led in a direction that didn’t feel authentic at all,” said Anita Collison, an Open Classroom teacher and the district’s teachers’ union president. She told the board she supports keeping the programs separate because the Open Classroom’s flexibility can accommodate changing class sizes. Smaller classes could be beneficial as the school slowly recovers from the pandemic, she argued, and parent choice remains vital. “Younger parents don’t understand that as much because they went through Covid and they didn’t see the different qualities,” she told the Light.
In March, Open and Montessori parents Sasha Gulish, Michelle Graneli, Jessica O’Connell and Aaron Michelson distributed a survey asking parents whether they thought the district should merge or maintain the two programs. The survey gathered more than 90 responses that painted a divided picture.
“I found the survey to be very valuable,” board member Amos Klausner said. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t obvious what parents wanted. They were very much split down the middle.”
Mr. Carroll felt the survey results reflected an authentic and potentially lasting lack of enthusiasm among younger parents for the individual programs. Whether because Covid rendered the normally vibrant Open Classroom less inspiring, or because new parents simply haven’t had time to develop loyalty to one philosophy or another, he said there could be an abiding change in opinion.
“Back in the old days, people would move here because of one of the programs, even from a long distance,” Mr. Carroll told the Light. One family moved from Chicago just to enroll their kids in the rare public Montessori program. “The newer parents now, my impression is they’re not here with that enthusiasm for the programs. We’re not seeing that loyalty to the programs the way we used to.”
Another factor for parents is social isolation. Some parents have said that the small district should remove its internal barriers to strengthen social bonds among kids still recovering from pandemic loneliness.
Last week, a special board meeting saw an even split of opinion, with longtime parents and former teachers chiming in to oppose merging the programs. Many pointed specifically to the unique benefits of Open Classroom. “It’s been nothing short of magical for us,” said Erika Obedzinski, whose fifth grader is graduating from the program this year.
Marlene Maiello, who retired in 2020 after three decades teaching in the Open Classroom, explained her loyalty to alternative education. For most children, any program with a good teacher will be enough, she said. “But there are some children [for whom] that’s not the case, and that’s where I believe that progressive education and alternatives are the way we have to try to reach all of our children.”
But a handful of parents reiterated their calls for the board to merge the programs, or at least come to a speedy decision on the issue. Lesley Desaulniers, the parent of a second grader in the Montessori program, said she felt excluded from the Open Classroom community and “old ways that need to change.”
“At what point does a 50-year-old progressive program no longer become progressive?” she asked.
The board needed to act soon, Ms. Desaulniers added, so parents could make an informed decision on where to send their children well in advance of back-to-school season. “At a certain point, toughen up and make a decision,” she told them.
Whatever the outcome, school officials are emphatic that their final decision will not be based on money. Declining student counts do not directly hurt the Lagunitas School District’s finances, because unlike most in California, Lagunitas is a so-called basic aid district, funded by property taxes rather than state aid doled out on a per-pupil basis. This status has been a boon as the San Geronimo Valley’s home prices have grown outlandish.
But it also puts the district in an unusual bind under California law: Lagunitas must pay for any child in its district who attends a state-authorized charter. With 16 valley kids at Ross Valley Charter this year, the bill for Lagunitas amounts to $138,000, more than the salary of a full-time teacher.
Unless many more students leave for the charter school next year, the district has the budget to keep the programs separate or to merge them, officials said. Staffing is the largest expense, and hiring just one new teacher to replace the two who are leaving the Open Classroom this year would save the district $120,000. But Mr. Carroll said the district still plans to rehire both positions, along with a replacement Montessori teacher.
Teacher dismissals and turnover have contributed to a lack of confidence in the Open Classroom, said Ms. Collison, the union president. She said the district should strengthen its support and training of teachers and keep both programs stable. “I think the investment in teachers, and retaining them, is going to support having more parents stay in our district and not go to the charter,” she said.
A compromise is possible, but it may not come as soon as next year, and no decision will likely be the magic bullet to solve the charter school problem. “There are some people who think that if we make the right decision, whatever that is, that magically these seven or eight kids who are going to the charter school will come back,” Mr. Klausner said. “I don’t think that’s the case.”
Some board members suggested moving the Montessori classroom to the upper campus, so the two programs could more easily interact while maintaining separate curricula. The move could help ameliorate social isolation, but principal Laura Shain feared that forcing teachers to relocate their classrooms before summer vacation, and displacing a daycare program now operating on the upper campus, could be “doing the hard stuff without the good stuff.”
Mr. Klausner said another compromise could involve combining just the kindergarten classes, helping new parents get comfortable in the district before they must choose between programs. But when the board consults parents at a June 13 community forum and renders a decision on June 23, Mr. Klausner wants to avoid half-steps. “I don’t think small compromises address the issue,” he said. “They push the hard decisions out further.”
In the long term, Mr. Carroll expressed hope that the valley could see a population rebound in coming years as new families move in, making the existential questions less urgent.
“Back when my kids were in the school and the two programs were twice the size, you didn’t hear a lot of talk about combining them,” he said. But, he added: “The new people moving in are economically different. Their desires might be really different, so I don’t know what exactly that’s going to look like. It could go either way.”