Two San Bruno schools to close

Closing the campuses will allow the district to trim operating costs, as recommended by officials seeking to address financial challenges long plaguing the San Bruno school system.

Board Vice President John Marinos acknowledged the difficulty of the choice, but said he believed it was the in the best interest of the district’s future.

“It’s an extremely hard decision,” he said. “I didn’t run for the board to close schools. But at this point, there’s absolutely no alternative.”

Blanco suggested otherwise though, and said she would have preferred the district keep the schools open while pursuing alternative fashions of balancing the budget.

The district should have held off on shuttering the campuses, for fear of harming the community’s faith in officials, said Blanco. Instead, she would have preferred to seek the sale of other district property in the immediate term and waited before making the hard choice regarding the fate of the two schools.

Her concerns about community support for the district were based on claims that the plan for closing the schools was generated by County Office of Education officials who were brought in to help the district cope with ongoing budget issues.

“This was not something that was community driven,” said Blanco, regarding the school closure plan.

Blanco was outweighed in pursuit of an alternative opportunity though, as officials will instead move toward shutting down El Crystal Elementary School in June, and Rollingwood Elementary School at a yet to be determined date.

Students will be redistributed from the identified schools to other campuses, as the closures were recommended under an attempt to establish fewer, larger schools in San Bruno.

The historic focus on operating more, smaller neighborhood schools has been identified as a key source of the district’s budgetary strife. An inability to balance the books over recent years led to discussions of cutting core educational programs, laying off staff, ending essential services and in the process generating significant labor strife with teachers who claim they are not paid enough to live locally.

Marinos said it is essential to examine enrollment sizes when charting a path to fiscal solvency.

“We can’t be asking taxpayers for a bond or parcel tax when we have excess capacity at our schools,” he said.

The district’s six elementary schools have traditionally served about 250 students per site, and officials are aiming to hike the general campus enrollment size among four elementary campuses to between 400 and 600 students.

Superintendent Stella Kemp lauded the board’s most recent decision, according to a prepared statement.

“The board’s actions will allow us to begin the planning for the transformation of the schools to provide the children of San Bruno a much better opportunity for successfully accessing the gateway to success in a global economy,” said Kemp.

The board also approved declaring the two identified campuses as surplus property, clearing the path for an eventual sale.

Marinos said he also begrudgingly supports such a proposal, as the district’s designs for a balanced budget lean on the revenue generated by a potential sale.

“I don’t like selling anything, but there is no alternative,” he said.

Kemp has said the district needs about $200 million to rebuild campuses, some which were built nearly 80 years ago, into modern facilities. The expense of maintaining old, antiquated campuses is not sustainable, she has said, while advocating for rebuilding new school sites.

The financial plan is buttressed by an effort to pursue a tax initiative, for which a pollster was hired to gauge community support. Depending on poll results, the initiative could be floated as soon as the fall election, Kemp has said.

Speaking to concerns regarding community mistrust generated through the school closure plan, Blanco said she believed ultimately the district’s pursuit of a tax measure would be harmed by the most recent decision. Blanco added she would prefer the district pursue a parcel tax rather than a bond measure, under an effort to satisfy frustrated educators.

“I honestly don’t feel like a bond is going to pass,” she said.

Should the district start generating new revenue and making progress toward balancing its books, Marinos said a central focus for the district should be investing in its classrooms.

District teachers earned an average of $67,546, according to the most recent information available from the state Department of Education, about $11,000 less than the rest of the county’s average for the 2015-16 fiscal year.

Regarding teacher salary, Marinos said he believed there was no other way to ameliorate their compensation concerns than make difficult choices aimed at getting the district on sound financial ground.

“Without balancing the budget, we will never be able to raise teacher salaries,” he said.

austin@smdailyjournal.com

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