Belmont-Redwood Shores eyes shrinking schools

Currently, the district offers one comprehensive sixth through eighth grade middle school, Ralston, and two smaller kindergarten to eighth grade schools, Sandpiper and Nesbit.

The district is projected to have 290 fewer students in the next six years, and both of the smaller middle schools are enrolled under capacity.

For the 2025-26 school year, 1,099 students are enrolled at Ralston Elementary. At Sandpiper, there are 123 students with 45 seats available; at Nesbit, there are 135 students with 33 seats available.

Under consideration are four options: keep the status quo, Ralston as the comprehensive middle school and Nesbit as the smaller alternative, Ralston as the comprehensive option and Sandpiper as the alternative, and also an option that could result in two more equally sized programs.

The last option, to restructure all middle school options, would “take much more than one year to implement,” Deguara said, whereas the other options could be implemented as early as next year.

Two hours of public comment were filled by parents, current and past students and staff members of Nesbit sharing their love for the school.

“This is a complicated issue, one that has a lot of emotion, that we are connected to, there’s a lot of factors — transportation, finances, there’s a lot that’s emotion,” Deguara said.

Nesbit, despite its small size, disproportionately serves a critical and underrepresented group of students.

In the 2024-25 school year, 40% of all English language learner middle school students throughout the district attend Nesbit. One in 5 students at Nesbit receive special education support; nearly 40% are socioeconomically disadvantaged, compared to just 9% districtwide.

In a survey of approximately 1,100 individuals across the district in November, there was a “slight favoritism” toward two middle schools instead of three, but a lot of respondents were still on the fence. Respondents were also four times more likely to send their students to Ralston rather than one of the small school options, Deguara said.

While “finances are not a motivating factor, changes in the program could assist the District in reducing its structural deficit,” a staff presentation said.

In November 2024, voters approved Measure P, a $171 million bond measure placed on ballots by the school district to support facility improvements and preservation at each of the district’s seven school sites. The bond was proposed to fund, in part, a portion of $260 million worth of identified needed improvements.

A special board meeting on middle school alignment will be held at Sandpiper School at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21. Trustees are slated to make a final decision on how the district should proceed at the board meeting, Feb. 12.