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The Santa Barbara school board voted late Tuesday night to send the entire student body of a downtown elementary school to the half-empty campus of La Cumbre Junior High School on the Westside.
The decision to merge the campuses of the junior high school and the K-6 Santa Barbara Community Academy -- which took five hours to reach after contentious discussion -- brings to a near-close a yearlong debate that had the unintended effect of pitting the two struggling schools against each other.
 Academy Principal Amy Alzina
That leaves uncertain the date of the actual migration to the La Cumbre campus at 2255 Modoc Road. It could occur as soon as the end of July or as late as winter break. Plus, the final decision will have to be approved yet again by the board.
Still, Tuesday's decision in front of a packed room was generally seen as a victory for the elementary academy – which wants to reunite a campus that is currently split across town -- and a defeat for the junior high school, which has finally begun to show progress in reversing a troubling trend of white flight and poor test scores.
Although the elementary academy’s test scores are stellar, the school has long suffered from having an inadequate building.
The campus at 215 E. Ortega Street has no indoor cafeteria, the playground is little more than a fenced-in concrete slab with a slide, and the absence of a gymnasium means kids must take P.E. classes half a mile away at Ortega Park, crossing busy streets to get there.
 At the academy, the absence of a gymnasium means kids must take P.E. classes half a mile away at Ortega Park, crossing busy streets to get there. Courtesy photo
Tuesday’s meeting was a roller coaster, with the board at first seeming to lean in a direction more palatable to the interests of the La Cumbre Junior High folks: a partial move of just the second- and third-graders to La Cumbre for next year, with the others to follow later.
That suggestion, made by school board member Kate Parker, had the academy’s parents and staff members groaning. Parker was the lone no vote in the 3-1 decision; school board member Annette Cordero was absent.
“Right now I’m thinking, ‘Dear God, can we do this one more year,’" the elementary school’s principal, Amy Alzina, told the board. “I feel like I’m struggling to keep everybody together.”
On the other hand, the staff at La Cumbre for years has struggled with a vicious cycle of losing top-tier students because of test scores, and losing ground on test scores because it is losing its best students. From 2002 to 2006, the school’s enrollment sank from 650 to 400. Nearly all of its middle class families left.
Two years ago, in an effort to turn the school around, Superintendent Brian Sarvis replaced the principal with a local stand-out, Jo Ann Caines, a widely respected veteran educator. This fall, the beleaguered school finally found reason to cheer: It was the only one of four local junior high schools to post a gain in enrollment.
Now, staff members fear that those gains are jeopardized by the addition of the elementary school, which could be a turn-off for families that are on the fence about whether to give La Cumbre a try.
La Cumbre teacher Brad Hufschmid didn’t try to hide his disgust Tuesday night.
“Did you look at that map?” he said, referring to the proposed blue print for how the two schools could share the campus. “It was a checker board. Clearly this was a plan developed by statisticians and administrators, not educators. You don’t care about La Cumbre. … You are out of touch.”
The debate has grown increasingly emotional.
 A neighborhood group invoked the tragedy of Jake Boysel in its efforts to oppose the increased traffic that will result from the merge. Courtesy photo
Critics said the signs were in bad taste. Academy parent Kristin Shi said the signs upset her 6-year-old son.
“He said, ‘Why don’t they want us here?’ “ she said. “It’s a hard question to answer, when every day they see this sign. We’ve lost some good families because they’re too intimidated to go to La Cumbre.”
But members of the group – who received permission from Boysel’s parents -- stood by their decision Tuesday night.
“We can learn from history and the tragedy of Jake Boysel,” said Holly Haws, who added that years ago a friend of her son’s was clipped by a car while bicycling in the area. “This is a very personal issue with us.”
The plan will cost an estimated $430,000. |
