Saratoga News

County rejects move to make changes in school boundaries

By Michelle Alaimo

After nearly a year of public forums and controversy, the Santa Clara County Committee on School District Organization has finally decided what to do regarding school district boundaries in the Saratoga-Los Gatos area--nothing.

"Further discussion of scenarios 2 and 4 ... is just beating a dead horse," committee member Jim Mathiott said.

The committee unanimously decided to "no longer consider" scenarios 2 and 4, which would have lined up school boundaries with city boundaries in Saratoga and Los Gatos or unified Saratoga and Los Gatos into K-12 districts. Two county committee members were not present for the vote.

The committee also decided in a 6-1 vote, with Eleanore Goldfinger opposing, to support Scenario 1, which basically leaves things as they are except in cases of extreme geographic isolation. County staff and the committee will work together to define what constitutes extreme geographic isolation.

"If you have to drive a student through another school district or by another school, you have a problem of extreme geographic isolation," committee consultant Mike Winters said.

Winters presented his final report in the yearlong Westside-area study to the committee on Jan. 7 at Lynbrook High School and told of negative effects each of the four scenarios would have with regard to the nine criteria used by the state to determine if reorganization is feasible.

The committee also unanimously decided "to defer consideration of a position on Scenario 3 until we have taken a position on the Moreland Unification petition." Scenario 3 would reorganize the Campbell Union High School District into three unified districts.

Larry Shirey, senior research analyst for the county Office of Education, told the committee that the final report on a possible Moreland unification will not be available until their Feb. 25 meeting. Since Scenario 3 would involve Moreland, the decision was made to wait.

The study began a year ago, after the county Office of Education received numerous petitions from homeowners in Saratoga and Los Gatos who wanted their school boundaries changed. Because of the large number of petitions, the county committee initiated a study to look into the possibility of reorganizing the Westside school districts. After the committee hired Winters last February, a number of public forums and meetings were held at which the audience was often divided.

Those who wanted into the Saratoga or Los Gatos school districts were often accused of wanting the change for the sole purpose of raising their property values. But, Winters said, he could find "no hard evidence" this was the case because the study itself was initiated by the county, not parents.

Some also believe the study has only further divided the community.

"The problems the study created have caused a separation worse than ever before," Jayne Sonnenshein, a Los Gatos Old Adobe resident, said. "Healing needs to take place."

The county will begin accepting territory-transfer petitions again on Feb. 1, Shirey said.

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