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The Pleasanton school board is poised to make a final decision on which of the two high school boundary adjustments options would be approved after months of community and staff input during Thursday’s board meeting.
The goal of the new boundaries will be to help balance the student population between Foothill and Amador Valley high schools in light of the decline in enrollment over the past few years. Each option will also effectively remove two “choice areas” where students had the option to pick between either high school.
According to the staff report, the new boundaries will take effect during the 2024-25 school year and will affect all new students enrolling in the Pleasanton Unified School District.
However, all middle school students will be able to attend the high school that is in their current boundaries as part of a transition plan. Those students will also be able to attend the high school based on the new boundaries if they care to do so.
The transition plan would also allow younger siblings to attend the same high school as their older siblings even if they are impacted by the boundary change.
Last spring, PUSD updated its elementary and middle school boundaries, which adjusted where certain elementary school students would go for middle school.
At the time, the board also committed itself to adjust the high school boundaries for the 2024-25 school year, which is what staff have been working on since then.
Last fall, the district’s technical and stakeholder committees — made up of district officials, trustees, parents, teachers, school administrators and members of the city government — met to review the current boundaries and developed two options to bring to the table.
The first option would evenly split students living in southern Pleasanton between Foothill High School and Amador Valley High School — it also directly feeds elementary school students to the high schools in their zones and keeps those elementary school groups of friends and classes together.
In contrast, the second option would send the majority of students in the south to Foothill and id more in with the current high school boundaries.
After the boundary options were created, the district held two community meetings in early December and posted a survey on its website for people to share their feedback and provide input.
Staff then presented all of that information to the board during the Jan. 11 meeting and took further input from the board.
One major issue that was raised during that meeting, in the past community meetings and in the survey was the choice areas being eliminated in both plans.
Choice areas represent neighborhoods in the city located in the Walnut Grove and Fairlands Park areas. Parents who live in those regions currently have the option to choose which of the two high schools they want to send their children to attend.
Staff will now be presenting the finalized options and transition plan details for final approval.
The board’s open-session meeting is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Thursday (Jan. 25). Read the full agenda here.
In other business
* Staff will be providing an update on the governor’s January 2024 budget and how it will impact the district’s 2024-25 budget.
According to the agenda, staff will review the fiscal challenges along with potential solutions and options on how to move forward with the projected deficit that comes along with the budget update.
“Staff will discuss the current projected deficit and the level of reductions that will be needed in 2024-25 to meet the 3% minimum state reserve requirement,” according to the staff report.
Information that will be covered includes reduction areas within the budget and the potential number of impacted employee hours or programs.
“Additionally, staff will review the timeline and required steps involved in reducing staff,” the staff report states.
* The board will be reviewing and discussing the independent financial audit reports for 2022-23 fiscal year. The audit will include a review of the district-wide financial statements, which ended on June 30, 2023, along with management discussion and analysis.
* Staff will be presenting its annual student enrollment report, which will go over various aspects of the last school year’s enrollment and how it compares to past years. According to the presentation, the 2023-24 school year enrollment data shows a nearly 200 student drop compared to the previous year.
* District staff will be recommending the board approve a resolution to recognize Black and African American History Month this February.
* The board and Superintendent David Haglund will be conducting a mid-year review of the board’s 2023-24 Organizational Work Plan.
