Schools

High School District to Discuss the "B" Word

Projected growth in enrollment at the schools in the Sequoia Union High School District has prompted a series of community meetings to discuss possible boundary changes.

 

In a letter sent home to parents and guardians of students in the Sequoia Union High School District on Thursday, Superintendent James Lianides invited input from families in the district on some proposed changes for the district at a series of community meetings.

Lianides and the SUHSD board of trustees will host six community meetings over the next month to discuss the framework for a possible boundary change within the district.

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The first community meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, May 7th at Sequoia High School in Redwood City at Carrington Hall at 7:00 pm.

According to the letter, boundary changes would ensure that all four high schools (Carlmont, Menlo-Atherton, Sequoia, and Woodside) would have an enrollment reasonably close to the district average.

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By 2020, Menlo-Atherton High School is projected to average 2,400 students, making it the school with the third highest enrollment in the district. (Its current enrollment is 2,009.)

In his letter, Lianides said the growing number of students comes mostly from Belmont, Redwood Shores, San Carlos and Menlo Park.

The superintendent also says that since that the last time boundaries in the district were drawn was in the 1980s, and if the district does nothing to address the projected growth, the number of students will increase unevenly in the different high schools.

The SUHSD set forth four tenets at its last meeting to establish a framework to guide the development of any boundary map changes. Those tenets are:

(1) Ensure that all four comprehensive high schools will have an enrollment reasonably close to the district average.

(2) Preserve communities and strengthen relationships between feeder schools and high schools. This can be accomplished by limiting the number of high school students from a partner middle school attend to no more than two, according to SUHSD.

(3) Seek ways to maintain diversity  

(4) Continue an open enrollment policy as an important part of the parent decision making process within the context of each school’s physical capacity and overall district balance.

A second set of meetings will be held in the fall as the board narrows its consideration of a construction plan and potential boundary maps.

On May 13, a meeting will be held at the Menlo-Atherton Performing Arts Center, which is located at 555 Middlefield Road, Atherton, California. The meeting will be conducted in English. 

On May 15, a meeting conducted in Spanish will be held at 1050 Myrtle Street, East Palo Alto, California. 

Another meeting in Spanish will be held at the North Fair Oaks Community Center, located at 2600 Middlefield Road in Redwood City, California on May 28.   All of the meetings begin at 7 p.m. 

To read the letter from the superintendent, click here.

 

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