Committee takes on ‘contentious’ closures

The Chico Unified School District Board of Trustees unanimously voted June 23 to appoint a Campus Consolidation Committee that will consider rearranging school boundaries and shutting down elementary schools.

The members will be: Gloria Bevers, Mary Gardner, Tino Nava, Ann Hayes, Eileen Robinson, Byron Jackson, Carol Linscheid and Paul Moore. One slot is vacant, waiting for a retired teacher suggested by the teachers’ union.

The consolidation, which could save $425,000 for each school it closes, is a response to declining enrollment (602 fewer kids since 1998-99) and a lack of ethnic and socioeconomic balance among the schools.

The district couldn’t get in touch with three of the nominees to let them know they’d been selected, and they also didn’t contact the rest of the 40 who weren’t chosen to let them know they wouldn’t be on the committee.

Board President Steve O’Bryan, who expects the issues discussed by the committee to be “quite contentious,” said the board was looking for citizens who had experience in the district as administrators, teachers or parents but weren’t currently tied to any particular school site, the last to insulate them “from the appearance of some sort of a bias.” Those chosen range from a retired Chico State administrator to a former PTA president to a business consultant.

The committee will use as a guide the results of a consultant’s demographics study showing where children live and where they currently attend school.

Also at the meeting, trustees tried to sort out a point of confusion. At an earlier meeting, the board had decided that it alone would handle the hot-button issue of whether to shift sixth-graders to junior high schools.

But when the “charge” to the committee showed up at the June 23 meeting, it included campus grade reconfigurations. Apparently, a subcommittee of two trustees had written it into the charge.

O’Bryan said he’d changed his mind, deciding that if the board didn’t let the committee weigh in on the sixth-graders decision, “we’d be tying their hands to a degree.”

But other board members were surprised at the shift and asked that the committee be absolved of the responsibility.

“I don’t know how that crept back in,” Trustee Rick Anderson said.

Trustee Rick Rees said that the debate should not be seen as moving sixth-graders to junior high. Instead, he said, “I see it as doing away with junior highs and creating true middle schools.”

Superintendent Scott Brown acknowledged that the educational community is prone to “fads,” and right now the push is toward six-seven-eight grade combos. But, he said, it’s a concept in which he believes.

O’Bryan stressed that whatever the committee comes up with over the coming months, they will be only recommendations, due to the board at its Dec. 15 meeting. “Ultimately, the decision will be ours,” he said. Public hearings on the issue will be held in January 2005, with a decision to be made in February.

Another matter that came up at the meeting was the superintendent’s evaluation. Brown is due to be scrutinized in closed session by the trustees each July, and while this will be his fifth year with the CUSD it’s the first time there’s been any significant interest from the public in weighing in on his performance.

Suddenly concerned are members of the Marsh Junior High School community, who told the board that the recent reassignment of its popular principal and vice principal have led them to worry about the performance, motives and even integrity of Brown.

Typically, the superintendent is also granted a raise after his evaluation, although last year Brown, who is paid $131,187 a year, declined to accept one due to the tight budget.