Saratoga News

County committee approves Moreland District unification

District study followup

By John Pancharian

The County Committee for School District Organization, at its March 30 meeting, approved the Moreland School District's request to unify. The petition is now off to Sacramento, where the state Board of Education will make the final decision whether to allow Moreland to leave the Campbell Union High School District and remake itself into a new K-12 district.

This possibility arose in the wake of the year-long debate over district boundaries in Saratoga and Los Gatos. Two of the four scenarios discussed then included the possible Moreland unification, but the issue was temporarily set aside after the county committee took no action. Since then community concerns have resurfaced as a number of petitions for territory transfer, and the Moreland unification proposal.

The motivation to unify the district came from Moreland parents, Superintendent Jim Ritchie said. More than 20 parents showed up at the Dec. 10 public hearing to explain their reasons for unifying. These included maintaining local control over their kids' education throughout their schooling, wishing to deal with only one district administration, creating an integrated curriculum all the way through high school graduation and creating a greater sense of Moreland community.

"It's going to be a challenge," Ritchie said. "But the energy and enthusiasm of the parents can't be undervalued."

Administrators in the Campbell district are not so enthusiastic about the unification. A report prepared by CUHSD for the county committee, titled "Cumulative Impacts--The Possible Demise of CUHSD," reads, "The end result of unification in Moreland will be a weakened educational program, poor facilities and overcrowded schools in CUHSD. Even that result, however, is overshadowed by the possibility of a succeeding unification in Campbell Union Elementary, which could effectively end the life of an approximately 100-year-old CUHSD."

But some speculate that the county committee members gave more weight to the report prepared for them by the consulting firm Caldwell, Flores, Winters, which found that the Moreland unification meets all nine state criteria for unifying. The state criteria do not include the effects of cumulative impact.

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