Public Forum for High School Boundary Changes End Thursday

Representatives from San Juan Unified School District understand how confusing school attendance area boundaries can be.

For the past two months, San Juan Unified representatives have held public forums for parents and faculty to gain perspective on the redistricting issue. The last of these forums will be held April 7, when Director of Planning, Cynthia Jensen and Director of Secondary Education, Derk Garcia will present illustrated diagrams and maps of what the new districts could look like if the changes are adopted. These changes wouldn’t take effect until the 2012/2013 school year for incoming ninth grade students.

“It’s more convoluted now than it will be when we finally clean it up,” San Juan spokesman, Trent Allen said.

Allen explained the true effort of the initiative is to align graduating middle and elementary school students with appropriate high schools, providing better “feeder patterns”. The reallignment has been part of the District’s strategic plan for years and has become more pressing with budget cuts and exponential growth within certain high schools throughout the district.

Much of what is being discussed boils down to simple proximity issues from feeder schools to high schools, meaning the District believes it more appropriate that elementary and middle schools act as feeders for high schools closest to them, Allen explained.

“Gold River students have to travel about 12 miles to get to Rio Americano,” Allen said.

Though technically, the closest high school for Gold River students to attend would be Bella Vista, at 5.4 miles, followed by San Juan High School, at 5.8, the District determined those students would be best served attending Del Campo, at 6.5 miles away, especially when considering traffic congestion, Allen said.

“It’s intended to eliminate fragmentation from existing middle school feeders to Bella Vista,” Allen said.

Bella Vista currently has two feeder schools channeling incoming freshmen enrollment numbers, including Andrew Carnegie Middle School and Orangevale Open K-8, while Will Rogers Middle School bears most the brunt of feeding students into both Del Campo and San Juan.

From there the situation becomes more convoluted and that’s what the Districts hopes to address in the coming months, Allen said.

Will Rogers is technically located on the outside of the San Juan attendance area with students living south of Madison Ave. attending Del Campo while those north of it will travel to San Juan.

“Will Rogers is another awkward situation,” Allen said. “It’s located outside of some of the high school attendance areas.”

Allen also explained that due to drastic state funding cuts, the elimination of all non-mandated home-to-school transportation for the 2011/2012 school year will result in some high school students needing to travel further to reach their assigned school when other high schools are closer to them.

Though families in San Juan Unified's district do benefit from having an open enrollment policy option for their students, not all are able to take advantage of that, Allen said.

“Families don’t have the anxiety to find an area to live, so their students can go to school,” Allen said. “We’re careful to be able to offer those options.”

The final forum will take place at San Juan Unified Central at 3900 Garfield Ave at 7 p.m., Thursday. Additional information on the issue can be found on the school district's website by clicking here and here.