Committee issues ranked list of sites for possible closures as community urges board to keep all high schools open

The Santa Rosa City Schools Board of Education heard a presentation and public testimony Feb. 5 on recommendations from a citizen-led school consolidation and closure advisory committee that ranked district campuses as possible candidates for closure and outlined alternative scenarios, including a 7–12 reconfiguration and program-based options.

The committee, chaired by Ben Wolf, issued rankings across the district’s high schools, middle schools and elementary schools and described a multi-step scoring process facilitated by School Services of California. Wolf said the committee’s work — which began in August and included nine meetings and roughly 20 active members — produced a two-column ranking (an equal-weight “yes/no” score and higher-resolution tie-breaker ranks) that the committee used as the starting point for deliberations. “Our purpose tonight really is to summarize the process, to summarize some of the criteria and considerations that we went through in the discussions, and then to summarize, of course, the recommendations from the committee at the end of it,” Wolf said.

Why it matters: The district faces a multi‑million‑dollar gap that staff and trustees said will require a combination of cuts and site consolidations unless alternative revenue or savings are identified. The committee’s rankings are intended to inform — not decide — board action. Trustees asked staff for updated enrollment, transfer and fiscal-impact data and for scenario analyses of alternatives the committee and public proposed.

What the committee recommended: For high schools the committee reported a three‑tier result, presented alphabetically within tiers to avoid pitting schools directly against each other. The first tier listed Elsie Allen (often called “LC Allen” in committee materials) and Montgomery High School; the second tier listed Santa Rosa High School; and the third tier included Maria Carrillo and Pioneer high schools. For middle schools the committee ranked Santa Rosa Middle School first, followed by Herbert Slater, Comstock and Rincon Valley Middle School. For elementary schools the committee placed Albert F. Biella, Brook Hill and Steele Lane in a first tier and Abraham Lincoln, CCLA, Hidden Valley and James Monroe in a second tier.

Process and criteria: Committee members considered 25 criteria proposed by the facilitator; after debate the committee removed three academic performance criteria that had been tied to the California School Dashboard (criteria labeled 14, 15 and 16) because of concerns the measures could disproportionately penalize schools serving higher concentrations of historically marginalized students, because some dashboard data were limited in span and because committee members questioned whether those metrics reflected site‑level conditions the committee was charged to evaluate. Wolf and other members stressed that the committee used both quantitative scores and qualitative deliberations: the numeric scores were “the starting point,” Wolf said, not the final determinant.

Public hearing and program concerns: The board then held a lengthy public hearing in which several dozen speakers addressed the potential closures. Many focused on Montgomery’s International Baccalaureate (IB) program and on protecting campuses that community members said serve displaced, low‑income and special‑needs students. “It is incredibly difficult to reinstate,” said Anjali Klimthakar, a Montgomery junior and IB candidate, describing the two‑year nature of the diploma program and the training and coordination it requires. Several student speakers and parents said relocating IB would break ongoing student‑teacher mentoring and could prevent students currently enrolled from completing projects begun as juniors.

On IB viability, district staff said they have been in repeated conversations with the International Baccalaureate Organization and that transfers have precedent. A district staff member who spoke with the committee, referred to in the meeting as Dr. Castro, said the IB organization had told staff that moving a program from one site to another is “quite viable” and that the organization had supplied examples and documentation for how juniors and seniors in mid‑program have been allowed to continue after a transfer, though administrators cautioned that moving any program would require meeting IB criteria at the new site.

Board questioning and requested follow‑up: Trustees asked staff and the committee for more up‑to‑date, campus‑level data before any decision: current year enrollment and transfer trends (internal transfers and inter‑district transfers), a breakdown of permanent versus portable capacity, and clearer cost estimates tied to alternate scenarios (including how much savings a closure would actually generate after accounting for likely attendance losses). Trustees also asked for an explicit analysis of impacts on special student populations (English learners, students with disabilities and students experiencing homelessness) and for an equity‑focused impact analysis. Trustee comments repeatedly asked staff to return numbers showing whether it would be possible to keep all five high schools open by combining programmatic changes with other savings — for example, piloting a 7–12 model at one or two campuses or creating stronger magnet programs to retain and attract students.

Alternatives under study: The committee and public suggested several alternatives the board asked staff to analyze, including (a) piloting a 7–12 configuration on select campuses (the committee explicitly identified LC Allen, Pioneer and Montgomery as potential sites for adding grades 7–8), (b) pursuing magnet‑style emphases (language immersion, health sciences, arts and CTE/tech themes) to increase enrollment, (c) consolidating Ridgeway (continuation/alternative education) in different configurations (move as a single program to an existing campus versus distribute services across campuses), and (d) co‑locating or expanding specialty programs such as CCLA and the French immersion program to preserve options district‑wide. Trustees asked staff to price and model those permutations.

What the board directed: No formal closures or policy votes occurred at the meeting. Board members directed staff to return with updated and expanded analyses at an upcoming study session, including: current‑year enrollment and transfer data (breakdowns by campus and destination), refreshed financial savings calculations tied to concrete reconfiguration scenarios (including the fiscal effect of moving a middle school into a high school campus), a specific equity and student‑impact analysis, and documentation from the IB organization and a practical checklist for what a move of the IB program would require. Trustees also asked staff to show multi‑year phasing options and to estimate reserve‑level impacts (how different reserve targets, including options above the minimum 3 percent, would change required savings).

Next steps: Staff and the committee said they will return with the requested analyses at a follow‑up study session and a subsequent board meeting; the board did not act on school closures at the Feb. 5 meeting.

Taken together, the committee report and the public hearing gave trustees a mix of ranked candidates for closure, clarified the tradeoffs of quantitative ranking versus qualitative impacts, and put program‑preservation scenarios — notably the fate of Montgomery’s IB program and the feasibility of 7–12 reconfigurations — at the center of upcoming board deliberations.