About half of the students at Nicasio School live outside district boundaries, but in a wrenching decision last week, the school board denied all new transfer requests—along with three renewals for students who have attended the school for years.
The parent of one child poised to be denied enrollment next year says she is protesting the decision.
Though debates over transfer students at Nicasio are not new, a recent budget crisis is eating up reserves and stoking both fear about the burdens inter-district transfers bring and uncertainty about the future of the small district altogether. It was these conditions that spurred the three-member board to temporarily stop the flow of new inter-district students so that it can consider the school’s future, which could include a downsize from three to two classrooms sometime down the line.
There are also major staff shakeups taking place: both the principal, Christy Stocker, and one teacher, Julianne Bretan, have announced their resignations. The board also shifted the principal’s teaching duties to two other teachers to help cut costs.
Commenting on the dilemma of the large number of transfer students, Mark Burton, a parent and the chair of the Nicasio School Foundation, said, “Residents are in favor of inter-district transfers. But unfortunately, the school doesn’t have enough students, and it also has too many.”
In addition to denying all new requests, capacity issues in Ms. Bretan’s third, fourth and fifth grade classroom spurred the board to deny requests at last week’s board meeting for three students. Prioritizing transfer students with siblings in the school, the board approved eight other renewals for that class. All renewals were approved for the other two classrooms, a kindergarten through second grade class and a middle school class.
“It’s a very difficult decision,” said Jason Snell, the board chair. “Hopefully it’s one of those things you never have to do again.”
Ms. Stocker, who has been the school’s principal for a decade, said the district never before denied renewal requests.
That’s cold comfort for the three students and their parents who are being forced to leave. The mother of a fourth grader, Sharron Drake, who lives in Inverness Park, said she sent a letter on Monday appealing the decision about her son’s enrollment.
“It’s a very small school and it works with his learning style and his particular needs,” Ms. Drake said. “I feel strongly that my son should stay at the school. He’s made two very good friends.”
The debates and issues surrounding inter-district transfers, budget problems, special education and classroom sizes, which have been ongoing for years, are related in complex ways.
Ten years ago, Ms. Stocker told the Light, there were over 60 children who lived in Nicasio and attended the school. Today that number is just 29, a reduction attributed to fewer local families. But steadily, parents living outside the district have filled the balance; for the coming fall, the district received 19 renewal requests.
Since the school’s major source of funding comes from property taxes, it makes no difference financially how many students are enrolled. But, unlike at many other schools, inter-district transfers do not bring funds with them. For some parents, this means the school more or less subsidizes them.
Ms. Stocker noted last week that denying the three renewals wouldn’t save the district money. But if the district eliminated all transfer students, the school population would be so small that it could reduce staffing and save money.
Back in 2012, parents and staff debated how to handle the transfer program. One parent advocated a complete ban, while others stressed that higher enrollment fosters a stronger social environment for kids. With only in-district students, it’s not unthinkable that a student could be the only kid in a given grade, if not in a classroom. Mr. Burton, the foundation chair, noted that fewer parents translates to fewer fundraising dollars.
That discussion led to a revised transfer policy in 2013 that set clear classroom caps. The policy was revised again in June 2015 to establish specific percentage-based caps for special education programs. For instance, it caps speech and language services at 4 percent of school enrollment. (In other words, if a student needing speech or language services from outside the district wanted to enroll, the district could say no if 4 percent of its students were already using those services.)
According to the district, special education services are one of its largest costs, and one of two major budgetary issues singled out at last week’s meeting.
Ms. Stocker said those costs can range from $100,000 to $200,000, depending on students’ needs. To put that into perspective, for the closing school year, revenues amounted to about $956,000. Special education services for the year cost about $150,000—a significant portion of the budget.
Discrimination against special education students is illegal, and the school is legally required to serve in-district students who need special education services outlined in a student’s individual education plan. But under the current transfer policy, the district can turn away special needs students, including renewal requests, from outside the district if it determines it does not have the capacity.
The changes in 2013 and 2015 upset Ms. Drake, who read a letter to the board on March 31 that was cosigned by her husband and three other parents. “We understand the financial issue that is dictating the revised policy…[but] we trust you also understand that to remove a student from school because they cost a district more to educate goes against the greater good… Not only does it cause incredible stress to families in the crosshairs of this revised policy, but it deprives the district of a more diverse student body,” the letter read.
Ms. Drake asked the board to revoke the policy.
The board did not, but it did approve changes that made it easier for current transfer students to remain, according to meeting minutes.
The new language says the district “may approve renewal requests that exceed the classroom capacity provided that the decision would not adversely impact the learning environment” and would be in the district’s best interest.
Nevertheless, Ms. Stocker recommended the three denials at last week’s meeting. She did not address that revised policy, but said the district could lose $26,000 if the third, fourth and fifth grade classroom exceeded 20 students because of state funding for small class sizes from kindergarten to third grade. Though the three transfers would only have brought a projected enrollment of 19 students in the room, Ms. Stocker said a buffer was needed in case new children moved into the district.
One former teacher who was not present at the meeting, Laura Rogers, who retired a year ago from teaching kindergarten, first and second grade, was deeply concerned about the well-being of those three students. “This is their school. This is what they know. This is where they belong,” she told the Light this week.
Ms. Rogers said in 2012, the district added a couple transfer students to her class at the last minute, despite her concerns about a larger class size—a fact that, to her, now seems ironic.
To some, losing small-class funding might be a burden the district should bear for letting the students in to begin with. But funding has also become increasingly important as certain expenses rise.
About eight years ago, Nicasio started shouldering more of the cost for business services like accounting and budgetary work. Once upon a time, the county Office of Education paid for those services, but starting in 2008, it mandated that Nicasio start paying some of the costs. For the next six years, the district paid about $38,000 a year—a significant amount for district with about a $1-million budget.
From there, the cost went up, year after year. This year, Ms. Stocker said, Nicasio received unexpected and difficult news: the county would no longer pay any portion of the district’s business expenses. In the middle of the year, Nicasio entered into an agreement with Bolinas-Stinson Union School District to share business services.
The year’s services ended up costing Nicasio over $97,000—twice what was projected. Business services will probably cost about the same amount for the next two school years.
This puts the district in a tough spot, particularly when it comes to reserves, according to a memo Ms. Stocker distributed at last week’s meeting. Given this year’s deficit spending, reserves are down to $394,517. If projections are accurate, the district will have just $205,005 by the end of the 2017-18 school year. Though state law only requires $65,000 in reserves, board policy puts that number at $245,219.
How the school will close its deficit and build back its reserves is unclear, but the decision to deny new transfers is intended to give the board time to figure that out. There are no easy answers. Barring all transfers could allow the district to cut a teacher, but small class sizes could also dissuade some district parents from sending their kids to Nicasio.
“I think the district will have to look at some serious choices,” Ms. Stocker said. “One thing the district will have to look at is if we can support the situation we have, or if we need to reduce staff.”
Mr. Snell, the board chair, said in an email sent to families and teachers after the decision that the financial challenge “is not a new issue and is something that the school and board see every year, in different forms. Luckily, [the school’s superintendent] and Mary Jane Burke are already outlining faculty scenarios to get us back on track.”