The Lagunitas School District’s Open Classroom program has reached an impasse over whether or not to install sliding doors between classrooms in its building, commonly called “the pod.” The issue has divided a community rooted in consensus decision-making—and for some, it challenges the basic principles of openness and student choice that define the program’s philosophical underpinnings. A decision on the doors is the last piece of a $5 million renovation project slotted for construction over the summer to improve facilities for the district, which houses two elementary programs and a middle school.
Passed by district voters in 2013, Measure A gave the district authority to issue and sell bonds for facilities improvement projects, with oversight mechanisms put in place to ensure the district spends these funds as promised. The Department of the State Architect has approved a design plan that specifies, almost completely, what renovations are to be made, but has asked for a decision on the sliding doors by no later than May.
Opinions on the doors have became so irreconcilable that the Open Classroom’s decision-making community—composed of parents, staff and alumni—recently reached out to the administration for an opportunity to express their views during a board meeting. The administration obliged, and last Thursday’s regular meeting marked the first time in the program’s more than 40-year history that a discussion on internal matters has taken place outside of a closed Open Classroom meeting.
“We had hoped that the [Open Classroom] group would be able to make a recommendation,” said Laura Shain, the district’s principal. “But they weren’t.”
If approved, the doors would allow teachers to separate their classes more easily, an option they have not ever had since the program began in 1971. To date, students—divided into kindergarten, first-second, third-fourth and fifth-sixth groups—have been able to walk freely from one end of their building to another during most of the day, crossing each other’s classrooms without ever having to pass through a door.
The freedom that students have to interact with the space and the people inhabiting it represents a key idea in Open Classroom’s philosophy, which encourages students to develop their own individual learning styles and paces. Unlike the conventional setting of walled classrooms and lined desks, the program’s open space allows for spontaneous and personalized learning methods promoted by psychologist Jean Piaget, a pioneer of cognitive child development theory; educator John Holt, a school reformist whose work greatly influenced homeschooling; and, among other inspirations, the English Infant Schools model, which encourages children’s choice.
“When children are free to do for themselves whatever they are capable of handling,” the program’s website states, “they grow in initiative and self-respect.”
The history of Open Classroom has its roots in the late 1960s, a volatile time when many people active in civil rights issues and the back-to-the-land movement relocated to the San Geronimo Valley. They brought with them alternative ideas about primary-school education. With approval from the community and the district’s administration in the early ’70s, the program’s founders rallied behind a consensus model for making decisions; since then, enrollment has hovered over the years at around 100 students, and four teachers.
Parent participation has long played a vital role in the program, with volunteers (at times with their younger children tagging along) engaging in the daily learning process. Likewise, students teach each other: it is not uncommon to see a sixth grader and kindergartener sitting at a table together, hunched over a problem that the elder student is helping the younger to solve.
Some feel the doors would fly in the face of Open Classroom’s educational philosophy.
“Once partitions are installed there will be a natural tendency to use them,” wrote a former longtime teacher, Amy Valens, in a letter read before the board last Thursday. “Rather than building flexibility, it is likely they will create barriers.”
But others believe the ability to close off classrooms will give a sense of privacy that could foster more effective learning environments. The doors could provide more quiet and less distraction, they argue.
“Currently, students that need quiet support are sent outside of the pod,” wrote teacher Larry Nigro in his own letter to the board. “Wouldn’t it be great if this could be done within the walls of our school?”
Traditionally, decisions that affect the program are made by consensus within Open Classroom meetings and are then brought before the board, which rarely denies the program’s requests. In theory, the ability of the entire community to back a decision that some of its members might continue to oppose ought to bring the community closer together.
But for many, the sliding-door impasse has called into question the efficacy of the consensus model. Parents in attendance at Thursday’s meeting expressed frustration that discussions had dragged on for so long. Some even hinted that it might be a relief if the board would help to resolve the issue.
Before Thursday’s proceedings began in earnest, longstanding board member Richard Sloan, one of the original supporters of program, urged the board to step back and allow the consensus process to take its course.
“The consensus model is designed to solve difficult issues. The consensus model is to establish community. It’s to build cohesiveness. It almost works like group therapy, at times. It has served the district and that program so well for, lo, these many years,” he said.
Mr. Sloan argued that although the Open Classroom community could agree to abandon the consensus model entirely, the district’s board should not intervene in the program’s ability to decide issues for itself. In response, board member Denise Santa Cruz-Bohman reassured that the board intended to do no such thing.
“Come to us with a recommendation, no matter what it is,” Ms. Santa Cruz-Bohman told attendees at Thursday’s meeting. “It comes down to what is best for your program, and that is up to you to decide.”
Ultimately, the final say on how funds can or cannot be used to renovate the Open Classroom pod does rest with the board. A decision will have to be made before May, even though the administration and the board pledged on Thursday that neither will intervene as long as the consensus model stands.
“We can’t control, nor would we want to, any program’s process for arriving at a decision,” said Mr. Carroll, who has a child enrolled in Open Classroom. “I would certainly defer to the program if they had a recommendation.”
Neither has the Open Classroom community reached consensus on a proposed relocation of the art room to an adjacent building to expand the space into an additional classroom. While staff support the change, parents have had less input on it, said Superintendent John Carroll. That matter will be discussed at next month’s board meeting.