By Mark Kregel
Saratogans who want to change school district boundaries to match city boundaries faced verbal opposition from Campbell residents afraid of losing their tax base and one of their elementary schools during an April 26 forum on school redistricting.
Some two dozen citizens voiced their opinions in emotional speeches to the Santa Clara County Committee on School District Organization, but no action was taken.
The forum was part of an areawide district reorganization assessment. The reorganization study emerged from a petition drive led by Saratoga residents who want to switch to the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union School District from the Campbell Union School District.
The committee has routinely handled petitions to transfer property in the past but has put a freeze on new petitions because of the large number received. Jennifer Crotty of Saratoga, spokeswoman for Putting Children First, said the number of petitions skyrocketed because residents have been denied interdistrict transfers lately.
Crotty is in favor of redistricting because she believes fragmentation is a problem with students living in Saratoga and attending Campbell schools. "We want to be full, not partial, members of our community," she said.
Mike Winters, a consultant hired by the board, said the purpose of the meeting was to gather data. He said he wanted facts, not just broad claims from groups presenting different opinions.
More than 100 people attended the forum in the Monta Vista High School auditorium.
The attendees were told to form groups, choose a spokesperson and list the group's three main issues on a piece of chart paper. One group of angry Saratogans scrawled "exiled to Campbell" on their sheet.
Campbell residents, fearing a devastating loss of funding to their schools, were also angry.
"When did the desires of one community take priority over another?" asked Curtis Lindsey, spokesman for Citizens in Support of Students. "I never felt that one could define community based on city limits."
Lindsey's group is composed of parents of Campbell children attending Marshall Lane Elementary School. They are concerned that redistricting would shut their kids out of that school. Although the school is located in Saratoga, it is in the Campbell school district, and 75 percent of its students are not Saratoga residents, Lindsey said.
However, Judy Tabrow of Putting Children First wants Marshall Lane to be transferred to the Saratoga Union School District.
"We are willing to take our bonded indebtedness with us to not raise taxes," Tatrow said.
Campbell resident and Marshall Lane parent Sue Mayer said that if the transfer takes place, Campbell would lose 11 percent of its elementary school capacity. The Campbell district built Marshall Lane in 1961.
Of the school's 554 students, the school district reports, 152 are from Saratoga, 158 from Los Gatos, 61 from San Jose and 163 from Campbell, with about 30 unaccounted for.
Campbell residents are concerned that a boundary change could deny Campbell schools taxes on the assessed property value of Saratoga residents whose children are enrolled there.
"[The redistricting] could have potentially disastrous results for the education of our children," said Leon Beauchman, president of the Campbell Union School District governing board.
"Apparently, [Saratogans] don't appreciate the dollars-and-cents effect on the district. Campbell would have to provide a school for displaced Marshall Lane students, and we simply don't have the money to do so," he said. Beauchman described the redistricting as separationist in nature. He suggested that parents were seeing problems that didn't exist. He said when he moved three blocks, his child had to attend a new school and adjusted quite well.
Saratoga residents said that with the current district boundaries, Saratoga is less of a community.
"We're all identified as Saratogans except in our school districts," Saratoga resident Edmund Baker said. "The school districts are drawn by accident rather than by purpose."
Saratoga resident Kathleen Schnieder, a graduate of Lynbrook High School in Cupertino, said attending a school in another city was a bad experience. "When I was a kid, my friends and I were all from Saratoga because we didn't have anything in common with the other kids," she said. "I was called a 'rich bitch.' "
Winters will complete his study and recommend options, which will go to the county committee. The committee will then make recommendations and have another public forum to discuss their stance. A final recommendation will be submitted to the state Board of Education, which will review the recommendation and decide whether to hold an election.
In a telephone interview, Marlene Duffin, a member of the county committee, said that transfer requests have been put on hold so that an overall study, funded by the county Office of Education, could be completed, rather than looking at the situation piecemeal.The committee on school district reorganization is made up of 11 people, two from each of the five county supervisorial districts and one member at large.
The study will be completed by December. Duffin said one of the scenarios to be considered would involve taking the entire city of Saratoga and making it one school district.
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This article appeared in the Saratoga News, May 7, 1997.
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