Novato Unified School District To Hold Community Input Sessions

Press release from the Novato Unified School District:

April 1, 2021

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(Novato, CA)…The Novato Unified School District will hold three virtual Community Input Sessions for each school identified by NUSD’s 7-11 Committee for potential school closure. At the Committee’s March 24, 2021 meeting, the Committee narrowed their focus to Lu Sutton Elementary, Lynwood Elementary, and Rancho Elementary Schools as part of their process to recommend the closure of one elementary school to the NUSD Board of Trustees.

The dates of the Community Input Sessions are:

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Lu Sutton Elementary School

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Lynwood Elementary School

Thursday, April 15, 2021

Rancho Elementary School

All sessions are from 6:00-7:00 pm and Spanish interpretation will be provided. The meetings will be held virtually via Zoom. For Zoom access information, please contact the school office at the respective school. The sessions will be recorded and posted to the 7-11 Committee webpage by April 17, 2021.

The purpose of the community input sessions is to listen to each school community’s thoughts and ideas and answer their questions about the potential closure of their school.

On December 17, 2020, the Board of Trustees of the Novato Unified School District established a 7-11 Committee advisory committee, to make recommendations around small school closures/restructuring and possible uses for the property if any schools are closed. The 7-11 Committee is tasked with recommending the closure of a school facility, not a program. Specialized programs are not dependent on the actual school site.

The 7-11 Committee has met four times since February and has reviewed district and school data including:

• District-wide enrollment and projections
• Financial update and multi-year projection
• School-level enrollment projections
• Capacity methodologies and calculations
• Resident students by attendance boundary
• Spatial analysis of students
• NUSD elementary to high school flow chart
• Detailed NUSD elementary student data and summary of all sites

After much discussion at all four meetings, the Committee gave direction to NUSD and King Consulting to provide more information on these three schools including boundary considerations, school site budgets and student assessment data going back at least two years.

The Committee is supported by King Consulting, which provides NUSD and the Committee with relevant information of several reports including community demographics, student generation study, land use and development, spatial analysis, enrollment projections, resident projections, facility capacity analysis, and review of the district-owned properties.

Future meetings are scheduled for:

• April 21, 2021 – Fifth meeting of the 7-11 District Advisory Committee (formerly April 14, 2021)
• April 28, 2021 – Sixth meeting of the 7-11 District Advisory Committee
• May 5, 2021 – Final (Optional) meeting of the 7-11 District Advisory Committee
• May 25, 2021 – Report presented to the Board of Education at Special Board Meeting

All meetings are open to the public and can be watched remotely on Novato Community Television (NCTV), Comcast Channel 30 or via NCTV’s YouTube Channel online. The webinar zoom link is posted the Friday before a meeting.

This press release was produced by the Novato Unified School District. The views expressed here are the author’s own.