Small Neighborhood Schools

By Jonathan Lundell

We should be building small neighborhood schools, not large centralized schools.

At about 800 students, Cunha Middle School already a large middle school. The middle school now proposed for Wavecrest is even larger. At 1,150 students, it's large, and it will grow even larger, to 1,400 students, before a second middle school is constructed, according to the district's current master plan. And of course a single middle school serving our entire school district, from Montara to San Gregorio, is not a neighborhood school for most of its students.

The delays we've had in building a new middle school are in fact a blessing in disguise. We know now that the Facilities Master Plan was wrong when it projected rapid enrollment growth; in fact our enrollment has been falling. We know now that building large centralized schools is not the best approach for educating our kids. We have a chance to stop and reconsider, and to get it right.

Neighborhood Schools

In a later section, I'll discuss the extensive research that confirms the advantages of smaller schools, but we don't need research to see the advantages of neighborhood schools.

The most obvious advantage of a neighborhood school is that it tends to be closer to the homes of its students and parents, making it easier (and safer) for students to get to school in the morning and to get home in the afternoon. Even if the school isn't quite close enough for a student to walk or bike to school, the drive to a neighborhood school is quick and easy.

If you live in El Granada, or especially Montara, compare getting to El Granada or Farallone View elementary schools with the morning trip to Cunha, through the morning commute traffic at Highwy 92.

This benefit of neighborhood schools extends to the entire community, in the form of fewer cars on the road and dramatically reduced traffic congestion.

It's easier for parents to be involved in activities at a neighbhorhood school, especially important as school budgets tighten and parents fill in services that used to be provided by the schools.

Neighborhood schools provide important recreational facilities for kids on weekends and during the summer.

With all these advantages--and I'm sure that the reader can think of more--it's something of a mystery why our school district is determined to build a large centralized middle school in Half Moon Bay, and to create an even larger Cunha/Hatch elementary school complex.

We need a new neighborhood elementary school, so that we can reduce the size of our existing schools. Instead of planning a large centralized middle school, whether at Wavecrest or Cunha or anywhere else, we need to be planning a neighborhood middle school for the midcoast.

Small Schools

If we're to have neighborhood schools, we need to build multiple small schools instead of centralized large schools. This means building a middle school on the midcoast, giving us two small middle schools instead of one giant one. It means building at least one more elementary school, not adjacent to Hatch, but serving its own set of neighborhoods.

Small schools do more than enable us to distribute our schools across neighborhoods. They also contribute positively to student academic achievement, student and teacher attitudes, social behavior (truancy, classroom disruption, vandalism, aggressive behavior, theft, substance abuse, gang participation), extracurricular participation, attendance, and dropouts. The positive effect of small schools is found across the entire student population, but is especially pronounced for minority and economically disadvantaged students.

All this may sound too good to be true, but the effects are well documented by extensive research. In The Impact of School Size, Robert Ehrich (Virginia Tech) gives an overview of some of the relevant research. A more extensive paper, School Size, School Climate, and Student Performance by Kathleen Cotton is available as part of the School Improvement Research Series (SIRS) from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. The research is both extensive and convincing.

Small Neighborhood Schools and CUSD

So how do we move to small neighborhood schools?

To begin with, we don't build a new, large centralized middle school, whether at Wavecrest, Cunha or anywhere else. Because we've allowed our schools to grow larger than they should, it'll take us a little while to get back on track. Here's one approach.

Build a new elementary school to serve the southern neighborhoods of Half Moon Bay. This school could be located at Wavecrest, if that project goes forward, but finding a new site if necessary will be much easier than finding a 25-acre middle school site, since elementary sites are much smaller. Our three main elementary schools range in size from 8 to 12 acres, and the small schools we want to build fall at the low end of that range.

Move grade 6 back to our neighborhood elementary schools, where it was before overcrowding forced it to Cunha. Cunha would become a junior high school, with grades 7-8, reducing its enrollment to about 550.

As our enrollment grows, build a new (small) middle school (or junior high school) on the midcoast. Northern El Granada would be geographically ideal, but there might be other good locations as well.

Decide, as a community, whether we want middle schools (grades 6-8) or junior high schools (grades 7-8). If the latter, we'd probably want to build one more elementary school, again in a neighborhood not immediately served by one of hte existing schools, so that we could reduce the enrollment in the remaining elementary schools, and tear down our worn-out modular classrooms.

Actively encourage enrollment at Kings Mountain, keepign it at a sustainable size.

It's easy to see why we should also update our master plan, so that we can plan the location of these new schools in advance.

Back on Track

How do we get back on track, with a commitment to small neighborhood schools?

Untie ourselves from the North Wavecrest project. If Wavecrest goes forward in time, then we can consider a revised agreement to buy about 10 acres for an elementary school, and forget about the land swap.

Identify an elementary school site for southern Half Moon Bay. This site might be Wavecrest, but we can't wait around another five years for Wavecrest to go ahead.

Start searching for a site for a midcoast middle school or junior high school. Because we can convert Cunha to a junior high school (at least on an interim basis), this is less urgent than siting a new elementary school, but it's still something we need to get started on. We should take a close look at the district's own 20-acre site in northern El Granada, for example.

As part of this process, we need to revisit and update our Facilities Master Plan. The old plan's enrollment projections are so far off as to be useless; we need to understand why those projections were so wrong, and we need to correct them. We also need to revisit the facilities financial plan, so that we know how we're going to pay for these projects.

Within two or three years, we should have neighborhood elementary schools of no more than 400 students each, and neighborhood middle schools of no more than 600 students each.

Let's get started.