Superintendent Toni Beal presented the results of a survey of the west county scholastic community on the potential consolidation of Analy, El Molino and Laguna high schools at the West Sonoma County Union High School District’s Nov. 18 board meeting.
The survey collected responses from 108 staff, 1,109 students, 1,196 current parents and 644 partner district parents, and the surveys “pretty much asked the same series of questions,” Beal said.
However, there are issues with the survey — and its data — that came to light in the presentation.
Beal said the district originally sent surveys via Google Forms and Google Surveys but had to recreate the student and parent surveys on Survey Monkey to ensure responses came from the intended parent population.
“We immediately found out that the surveys were being shared with a larger population than just our parents, so we decided that those survey results would not be valid,” she said.
There were also parent and administrative concerns about the numbers of El Molino respondents there were versus Analy respondents. Most of the surveyed students hailed from Analy at 60%, with 26.5% representing El Molino and 3.61% from Laguna.
Terra Del Drago, another frequent board meeting attendee, said, “I’m sorry, but the proportion of these percentages hasn’t been adjusted to be fair and equitable to both student populations.” She said polling more Analy students would “absolutely sway this vote” and represent that on the pie charts. “Be fair about it. We care, we are here and these surveys, I am absolutely sorry. This needs to be changed.”
Secretary Darlene Packard of El Molino High School estimates 566 students are enrolled at El Molino. Roughly 1,800 students are enrolled in the entire district, according to the board’s Oct. 7 meeting featuring presentations on initial consolidation feasibility studies.
Leslie McCormick said she was grateful the district conducted the survey, but the effort came a little too late. “I also agree that you are serving two schools that are completely different sizes. Ratios need to be applied to these numbers. These mean nothing. Period. This survey is almost as biased as this board is. You need to really think deep, guys. You’re not representing the west county,” she said.
Parents and students
The survey results Beal showed most student, parent and staff respondents preferred to consolidate in the 2021-22 school year if merging was inevitable.
The district sent out the surveys separately from a poll by Isom Advisors assessing support for a parcel tax measure, according to Beal’s presentation. Bruneman said at the Oct. 21 town hall that the board first needed to decide whether to consolidate at all before pursuing more thorough impact studies that would inform a decision on which campus would receive the unified student population.
Jennie Bruneman, director of facilities and bond construction management, said the questions were asked on “a scale where people could go ‘would likely support’ or ‘would not support,’ and there was a middle of ‘not sure,’ so we made some assumptions on people who … lean to the ‘no’ side or lean to the ‘yes’ side.”
According to the survey results Beal presented, 44% of students said they would probably support consolidating Analy and El Molino to save resources and programs, with 14% in definite support. Meanwhile, 20% of students expressed they probably would not support consolidation and 13% said they definitely would not support merging, she said.
If consolidation were to happen, 494 students said they preferred to merge in the 2021-2022 school year, followed by 263 favoring to hold off for more than two years, one of Beal’s graphs showed.
Which campus?
Beal’s charts indicated 34% of surveyed students said they would either definitely or probably continue to attend if the district consolidated onto the El Molino campus, while 51% said they probably would not or definitely would not attend. Thirty-three percent of El Molino students responded they would attend if El Molino stayed compared to 5% of Analy students and 10% of Laguna students.
In comparison, 55% of respondents said they would either definitely or probably attend if Analy was the receiving site, versus 34% who said they probably or definitely would not. Forty-eight percent of Analy students said they would attend as only 8% of El Molino students and 10% of Laguna students said they would definitely attend.
“And this was kind of an interesting thing for Laguna because that would be that they were moving from Laguna to the Analy campus,” Beal said. Laguna High School is located less than half a mile away from the Analy school grounds.
The presentation indicated a swath of 44% of Laguna students said they would not attend El Molino if the program moved to the Forestville site.
Meanwhile, 444 of the 1,196 surveyed parents supported consolidating next year if it were to happen, seconded by the 2022-2023 school year “to allow for more conversations, knowing programs would still be cut,” Beal’s slides said. Almost the same number of parents preferred to wait over two years.
Only 13% of WSCUHSD parents said they would support consolidating in order to save resources and maintain programming, with 24% responding they were likely to back the merger. In contrast, 26% said they probably would not support consolidation and 19% said they definitely wouldn’t, according to the survey results.
The district survey showed 38% of parents said their student would or would probably attend high school in the district of the student body consolidated onto the El Molino campus, while 45% said their student probably or definitely would not stay. If schools consolidated onto the Analy site, 64% responded they probably or definitely would keep their student in the district, compared to 28% marking that their student would probably or definitely not attend, according to the presentation.
When questioned about their concerns, choices for which included school size, creating a unified district culture, distance to school, transportation services and teachers, parents and students alike listed their biggest concern in the event of consolidation as “all of the above.”
A graph showed school size was the second-highest answer from parents, while students named distance to school as their next most common response.
Staff input
Beal estimated the district employed close to 200 staff, 108 of whom responded to the survey. The majority of those surveyed said they would continue to work in the district if schools combined, she said.
The staff most commonly answered that they would highly support consolidating El Molino and Analy to save resources and programs, at 31.5%, according to Beal’s presentation. The second highest response was that they were “unsure,” at 26.9%, she said.
The survey results showed 63.9% said they would remain in the district if schools consolidated onto the Analy campus, and 58% said likewise if the student population united on El Molino grounds. Roughly 15% of staff responded they were unsure they would stay in either scenario. The large majority said they would stay if Laguna moved to the El Molino site, according to the presentation.
Most preferred consolidation to occur in the 2021-2022 school year “to save the most elective and sports programs,” at 48.1% if merging was inevitable, seconded by 34.3% who opted for the 2022-2023 school year, Beal’s slides said.
Thirteen percent said they preferred to consolidate over two years from now. “And … there was a percentage of people who also responded that they wanted to maintain both campuses,” she said. The pie chart showed a small slice representing staff who favored maintaining both sites “at the expense of elective and sports programs.”
Community impact was the number one biggest concern staff said they would have if the two comprehensive high schools consolidated, at 28.7%, although Beal said almost half entered an individualized answer. “Most of those concerns had to do with community impact or creating a unifying culture,” Beal said. Distance to school was staff’s next top concern at 16.7%, followed by 13.9% citing school size.
Feeder schools
A decision to merge schools would impact families of students enrolled in WSCUHSD’s partner districts. Beal said she sent surveys to the superintendents of Gravenstein, Oak Grove, Forestville and other partner districts to distribute them to their parent population.
The answers offer some first glimpses of numerical data on community attitudes around consolidation after a month of town halls and meetings to discuss merging the schools as a path to treat the district’s punctured budget. According to Chief Business Official Jeff Ogston at the Nov. 4 town hall, the district operates with an ongoing yearly deficit of about $1.1 million, with declining enrollment and attendance triggering a loss of programming.
At past town halls, community members called for the board to delay decisions on potential consolidation and at this meeting, numerous attendees challenged the survey’s validity as being unrepresentative of the district community and opposed consolidation.
Community comments reveal concerns
Despite the very real financial concerns that make consolidation all but inevitable, community opinion still runs very much in opposition.
“Please look at the results of the survey. You know, you’re completely destroying your school and your district with the consolidation,” said Forestville resident Clay Thistle. “Look at the numbers, no one wants to go. Get a better plan. Please, there are better ideas out there. Angie [Lewis], Kellie [Noe], please guide this board forward in a better direction.”
Meanwhile, Analy parent Debbie Ramirez said the survey struck her as approaching possible consolidation with a consumer model. “And what I’m not hearing is a more important discussion about equity in public education and making sure that all of our students, no matter how far away they are from campuses and so forth, and economically disadvantaged students do have access to quality education facilities. And so I don’t think that necessarily asking people what their opinion is as if they’re shopping for a school is the best data to be using in making an important decision like this,” she said.
El Molino parent Gillian Hayes said her daughter received the survey and wanted her to inform the board that “the survey was completely confusing and she felt that was leading her down a road to choose either an elective or closing her school.” Hayes added, “It’s not fair.”
Stefanie Stornetta said the survey was deeply biased and revealed the community does not want to merge schools. “Amazing with all that is going on in our world that our own board members can’t see past your own agendas and provide equitable opportunities for our students. I’m thoroughly disgusted.”
