With 6th Graders Moving to Parkside, District Looks to Change School Boundaries

Starting next fall, the San Bruno Park School District plans to make the big change and move all sixth graders to Parkside Intermediate.

But, in order to do that, the school district is going to have to do some shifting around with students because fewer sixth graders means less school attendance on the elementary school level. According to the school district, that means school boundaries may have to change for schools to enjoy the same level of service they receive now.

That is why the school board decided at its July 20 meeting to hire Fairfield-based consultant Total School Solutions to come up with a plan to keep all of the district’s elementary schools balanced.

“With each school's sixth graders going to Parkside the result will be that all of the elementary schools become smaller,” Superintendent Dr. David Hutt said in an email. “The interest that the school board has in getting advice, connected with attendance boundaries, is if the larger schools can be reduced in size, while very small schools made slightly bigger.”

Parkside is currently undergoing a renovation project, which is partly funded by the proceeds from the sale of the former Carl Sandberg site, to accommodate the anticipated expansion of students. But it is well known that moving sixth graders to Parkside could have an impact on the district’s elementary school enrollment, where smaller kindergarten classes and declining figures have been a concern for the last several years.  

Hutt explained that the goal of Total School Solutions, which is being paid at a cost of $17,800, would be to come up with different models to help each school maximize enrollment at each grade level, keeping in mind that once the district transitions Parkside to a sixth- through eighth-grade school it may lose some students. The district’s development advisory committee met several times over the last school year to come up with strategies to address what is known as elementary school student attendance boundaries.

“This would be done by adjusting the boundaries of which elementary school is designated for a particular geographic area of the city,” Hutt said.

According to the district, the consultant will be taking a look at the addresses and grade levels of each student and bringing forth several models to the school board at its Jan. 12, 2012, meeting.