Healdsburg Charter School and Healdsburg Elementary School will merge into one program for next school year
In a unanimous vote on Feb. 19, the Healdsburg Unified School District Board of Trustees approved the district’s plan to merge the Healdsburg Charter School and the Healdsburg Elementary School into one elementary program.
The vote came after several months of community feedback, workshops and elementary school design team work centered around the idea of improving equity in schools.
The district’s deep dive into equity concerns started in response to community concerns about equity within the school district and worries around achievement gaps and racial divide.
The school board formed an equity task force in 2018 and created an equity action plan in June 2019, which included the task of creating one elementary school program (also in 2019 in response to equity concerns, the school board unanimously voted to merge the kindergarten classes from the Fitch Mountain Campus and Healdsburg Elementary School and create one kindergarten program).
While the two schools are currently separate, they do share the same campuses. Kindergarten through second grade attends the Healdsburg Elementary School campus and grades three to five attend the Fitch Mountain campus.
The two schools will merge into one program by the next school year, 2020-21.
Core elements of the instructional program include project based learning, Spanish instruction, an enrichment program, small group instruction, paraprofessional support and small class size.
First to third grade will have 18 to 22 students per class and fourth to fifth grade will have 24 to 25 students per class.
In a press release about the change, Healdsburg Unified School District Superintendent Chris Vanden Heuvel said, “We’ve done a lot of listening over the last couple of years and we know that one school is what our families and our staff want. We also heard loud and clear that they want project-based learning and we’re excited to be able to offer this innovative student- centered approach to all of our elementary students.”
The next steps for implementing the change include ending the charter for the charter school, creating an informational brochure for parents, conducting outreach to parents and preschools, conducting a three-day project based learning training session for all teachers and reviewing new costs associated with the change.
There would also be the addition of a Spanish instruction teacher and a few paraprofessionals.
According to a report on the reconfiguration, the estimated cost with these changes and additions amounts to $660,000.
At the Feb. 19 school board meeting, Holly Fox, a Healdsburg parent and a member of the elementary school design team, said while this may have been a tough and sometimes emotional process, the transition will have some powerful changes.
