Santa Rosa parents hire lawyer to challenge board
Group says school is a moneymaker for district
By Michelle Knight knight@theacorn.com

Parents whose children attend Santa Rosa Technology Magnet School said they have proof that the Pleasant Valley School District will lose more money than it saves if it removes middle school grades from the Santa Rosa campus.

Stacy Lucchese, one of about 30 Santa Rosa parents, said they planned to reveal information at last night's meeting. She would not say prior to the board meeting what the ad hoc committee planned to tell district officials.

"We have some . . . information that it's not in the financial interests of the district to close the middle school," Lucchese said. "We hope that they'll reverse the closure decision and expand us."

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The parents were expected to talk about the loss of state funds from about 60 students who attend the Santa Rosa Valley school from outside of the district.

The Pleasant Valley school board stunned Santa Rosa parents March 29 when it voted to remove the sixth and seventh grades from the school starting next year. The board's move prompted the parents to organize and hire a lawyer to invest whether their rights had been violated by not having the opportunity to speak to the school board beforehand.

The lawyer wrote a letter to the district to ensure the parents were put on the April 19 agenda, parent Gail Michalak said

"We were the only school that did not have the opportunity to present a case for why the school should be kept open," she said.

Interim Superintendent Ken Moffett said it was unnecessary for the parents to hire a lawyer to be put on the agenda.

"I think the Santa Rosa parents are really trying to work within the system," Moffett said. "They were upset; I understand it."

Parents from other schools staged public rallies, letter writing campaigns and showed up en masse to speak at board meetings after an advisory committee in January recommended the district close their school campuses.

Michalak said if they had known their school was being considered by the board they too would have voiced support for keeping their kindergartenthroughseventh-grade school intact.

Prior to talk of school closures, the school district had expected to add eighth grade to the campus next year.

Santa Rosa parent Marsha Hively, a member of the advisory committee, said the committee disregarded any closure scenarios involving the school because the cost of busing children elsewhere outweighed the savings the district would have reaped.

"It did more harm than good," Hively said.

Some Santa Rosa parents said the board's decision to eliminate the middle school grades there came so late in the school enrollment season that they have few options now.

Hively said if the board doesn't reverse its decision to remove sixth and seventh grade from Santa Rosa, she doesn't plan on enrolling her three children in Las Colinas Middle School, as the board may have expected. She may consider putting them in a private school or a Conejo Valley middle school and many other Santa Rosa parents will likely do the same, she said, causing the district to lose even more state funds.

Hively added that many Santa Rosa students think they are the cause of the board's decision to remove the middle school grades, "because no explanation was given to them.

"That was the worse part, we felt that we didn't even get a voice," Hively said.