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Parents voice concerns about re-draw of school boundaries
Officials say the new school boundaries are a move toward neighborhood schools
By Jessica Lyons
Carrie Maietta has a son in second grade and a daughter in kindergarten. Both attend Booksin, an elementary school known for its music program, high test scores and parental involvement. Maietta herself volunteers at the school between three and five hours a day, five days a week.
"I volunteer in my children's classrooms, I do yard duty, I'm present on the playground," she says. For Maietta--and for the majority of Booksin parents--this is routine. "They're a very devoted bunch of parents," she says. "It's a great community. That's why when we moved into San Jose Unified School District, we bought property in Booksin territory." That, and the high test scores, she adds. "That's why we chose Booksin, and many of our neighbors did the same."
But now those boundaries are being re-drawn, and Maietta's home between Newport and Minnesota avenues falls in Willow Glen Elementary territory, a change that doesn't sit too well with Maietta.
"We're the ones being affected and we're the ones who don't like it," she says.
Because both of her children are already enrolled at Booksin, the new boundaries won't affect her family directly, Maietta says; but for other families in her neighborhood with younger children, it might.
They want to keep their kids at Booksin, even if it means a longer commute.
Neighbors to the south of the new boundary line, however, say they would welcome Booksin families into their community with open arms.
"Right now, these kids are traveling a long distance to go to Booksin, and from my perspective it helps Willow Glen Elementary become more of a neighborhood school," says Mary Schorr, a Willow Glen parent and member of the Boundary Advisory Task Force. "A good majority of the students are bused in here, and because I live in the Willow Glen community, I would like it to truly be a neighborhood school."
A federal judge's decision in 1996 to send elementary students back to neighborhood schools triggered the need for new boundaries. But as San Jose Unified School District re-draws elementary school boundaries, some parents say they prefer the commute over a neighborhood community.
"We have a very strong parent presence at Booksin," says Stephanie Preskar, president of the parent's club BESCA (Booksin Elementary School Community Association). "We have parents who are tutors, who help run the library. The parents' association raises over $100,000 every year for the school. There are parents involved in every aspect."
The 40 or so Booksin families who would be affected by the boundary change say they don't want to lose their tight-knit school. Nor do they want to have one student at Booksin and another at Willow Glen.
"You don't want to have kids at three different schools," Preskar adds. "People feel they've spent three years in this community and now their other kids can't go to that same school."
Schallenberger parent Darla Crane, the outgoing Home and School Club president, can appreciate that dilemma. She has one son at Schallenberger, a son at Willow Glen Middle School and a pre-school age daughter, and an earlier draft of the District's new boundary lines would have sent her youngest to Booksin in a year.
"That was my main concern as a parent," Crane says. "I would have had three children at three different schools." But Crane considers herself lucky. Boundary lines have changed since the initial re-draw, and now Crane's home is back within Shallenberger's district--by two blocks.
"As a task force, they've tried very hard to bring us back to neighborhood schools," she says. "As a parent, you want to keep your kids at the same school."
A clause that would allow siblings to remain together is certainly a possibility, says Maureen Davidson, a spokesperson for San Jose Unified School District.
In returning to neighborhood schools, however, the district is splitting Booksin neighborhoods, some parents say.
"What they're doing is not consistent with what they are saying." Maietta says. "They are tearing up my neighborhood by sending half of the kids to one school and half to another. It's hard to develop community when the neighborhood kids are going to different schools. They're fragmenting our neighborhoods."
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
