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Santa Rosa Weighs School Mergers as District Faces $30 Million Budget Deficit

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Santa Rosa City Schools district is beginning to hold a series of town hall meetings from Jan. 13–23 to address the community's concerns over potential school closures and consolidations — an issue also playing out in San Francisco and Oakland.  (Kori Suzuki/KQED)

Santa Rosa City Schools held the first in a series of town halls on Monday night to discuss proposals to close or merge several schools as the district faces declining student enrollment and up to $30 million in budget deficits in the next two years.

School district officials suggest closing three elementary schools, a middle school and a high school to save $11 million annually.

An advisory committee made up of district staff, teachers, parents and community members is deciding which schools they will recommend to close and where students in the affected schools will go. A district spokesman said all schools are being considered.

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Meanwhile, the committee has laid out several scenarios for consolidating schools. At the town halls, the committee is asking people to weigh the pros and cons of each alternative, such as putting all transitional kindergarten through 8th-grade students in one school or putting TK to 3rd-grade students in one school and 4th to 8th-grade students in another. Another possibility is to combine 7th to 12th-grade students onto one campus.

“There’s all kinds of different ways to look at [consolidation],” said Lisa August, the district’s chief business officer. “It’s always looking at: how can we reinvigorate and reimagine, not just ‘what are we taking away?”

Like many school districts across the state, Santa Rosa City Schools must consider austerity measures as millions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief funds run out. In addition to school closure or consolidation, the district proposes cutting staff and streamlining special education services.

At the same time, the district is facing declining enrollment. A little more than 15,300 students were enrolled in the school district in the 2013–14 school year, according to district data. A decade later, that number dropped to 12,860.

“We’ve operated in the same way for a number of years, as have most schools,” August said. “But we have a declining population of school-aged children, not just a declining enrollment here at our schools. And so we have to do things differently to meet the students in our community where they’re at.”

The advisory committee will gather input from the town halls, and will send their recommendation to the superintendent and school board, which is expected to make a final decision on Feb. 19.

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