Martin:
One interesting twist. You'll recall there was a controversy last night over exactly what the Board did at its January meeting regarding this committee.

Apparently, the tape recorder was, coincidentally turned off just before that part of the agenda. So no recording is available.

From what I understand, that is not the only thing raising a few eyebrows. This has a real potential to get ugly. and fast.

This is an example of the public decision-making process at its worst. Committee trying to do a tough job, while prominent people on the Board and in the Administration are trying to slant the process.

Wish we weren't so accustomed to that with the SBPSD.

You and I can agree on this issue, Chris. I, for one, am not happy with the way this smells at all. I encourage all SBPSD parents and community members to get involved by attending the meetings and reviewing the agenda's and notes via the district website at http://sbpsd.k12.ca.us/ddac.htm. The meeting schedule is posted here and meetings are open to the public.

The district has criteria for the closing of a school ("adopted at a regular meeting of the Governing Board of the San Bruno Park School District on December 12, 2007," according to the district website). Whether these can all be objectively defined and applied at all, not to mention by April, is a whole 'nother story:
• Assess the least disruptive option to students and the community
• Assess the operating costs of each site, excluding the cost of staffing
• Assess the operational and prospective maintenance cost schedule for each site
• Assess the potential for revenue generation of each site, if closed
• Consider the level of safety in changing “walking distance”
• Assess the prospects of transportation for getting to a different school site
• Determine the capacity of each school site to receive additional levels of enrollment, in “bricks and mortar” buildings
• Determine the capacity of each school site to receive additional levels of enrollment, in all buildings
• Determine the implications of reverting all students to their “home school”

Actually Joe, there was a fair amount of discussion at the Committee meeting about how to evaluate things like achievement, within the guidelines the Board gave the Committee.
Some of the criteria Heidi quoted above are ambiguous enough that you could put specific academic impacts into the mix. The real problem is that academic issues affect closure consideration in several discrete ways.
1)Will education & achievement be better (or worse) in the District overall if a school (any school) is closed?
2)If some school is going to be closed, will the choice of WHICH school to close have any impact on education in the District?
3)If you decide to close some school, is the District ready to deal with all the issues that go with it? Special ed? ELL?
Which of these is within the scope of what the Committee is looking at, or could practically look at?
#2 is clearly the type of thing that they should look at. The criteria from the Board all seem aimed at making a choice between sites. Is there a concrete academic reason why one site should be considered for closure (compared to another site)? The Committee should look at that, along with all the other impacts mentioned above.

I'm not sure how you objectively weigh that though. Breaking up any community will cause some problems. I don't know how you can judge that it will be worse for Crestmoor kids to change school than for El Crystal kids.

After working in the area schools for years, I vote that they be called to task on the hundreds of thousands of dollars thrown away each year. The discarding of previous year's supplies in order to qualify for more funds for the new school year would disgust most people. There are a lot of dedicated teachers but there are nearly as many morons that work with our children. Yes, I'm sounding off.

Chris Is the Committee down to El Crystal and Crestmoor already?

barry, there has been one meeting and there was no talk of closing a specific school.

Barry, size always comes up because it's not as subjective as some of the other criteria. Another reason discussion of boundaries and "home school" comes up is that Crestmoor for many years (don't know if this is still the case) was ( still is?) significantly populated by intradistrict transfers, and that if these kids would go back to their neighborhood schools by address, there would be so few kids at Crestmoor that it would be hard to justify keeping that school open.

One factor making things worse now is the loss of Class Size Reduction. When K-3 were at 20 kids per class, it was easier to juggle things. for example, if you only had 16 kids at a grade level, you only need 3 or 4 more to make a full class. Now you need 12-15, or else you have an extra split class.
Suddenly, they were in the business of large-scale involuntary transfers to fill classes up.
Also, parents were much more open minded about split class when it was only 20 kids. It's a much harder sell with 31.

I hope the committe isn't restricted to the listed criteria only and can consider other factors. For instance, El Crystal is a demonstration center for educational technology, and every classroom has amazing equipment that the teachers use every day. I don't think any other school in the district is as "wired" as El Crystal, and this unique resource should be taken into consideration by the DDAC.
El Crystal's location next to city park is another unique feature that merits special consideration.