SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif- San Luis Coastal Unified School District is looking at ways to handle a boom in enrollment at a small elementary school. One option is to close an alternative school. More families with young children are moving into the area near Bishop's Peak Elementary School in San Luis Obispo.
Charles E. Teach Elementary, an alternative school for about 150 accelerated learning students in grades four through six shares its campus. Teach Elementary could face closure as enrollment grows and space becomes limited at its shared campus with Bishop.
The district has two options, one is to keep things as they are and deal with the consequences of running out of room on Bishop's Peak's campus or move forward with different plans. Wednesday Superintendent Eric Prater will give his recommendations at a board meeting.
"I just don't want to send neighborhood families to another school across town, its just not right," said Superintendent of San Luis Coastal Unified School District, Eric Prater. After months of recommendations and comments on how to address the capacity problem at Bishop's Peak Elementary, San Luis Coastal Unified School District has narrowed down the list of possible solutions.
"Do we do a redistricting of school boundaries to accommodate two popular schools on one campus, or do we limit open enrollment, or do we really start delving into the idea of accelerated programs," said Prater. Prater has a few recommendations he will present to the school board, one is to ask teach elementary to cut the number of its students.
"A one year moratorium on 4th grade enrollment into the Teach school program, simultaneously freeze open enrollment into the Bishops Peak campus so that we can ensure that we will have enough classroom space for the neighborhood families," said Prater. The other recommendation is to create a task force of parents, experts, staff and community members to take a closer at these issues. "Examine the future of the Teach school program, whether it needs to evolve, have its own home, what would the configuration look like, these are all the things that we need to analyze and evaluate," said Prater.
The task force, if it is approved by the school board, will meet March- September. Later in the year, October through December the groups recommendations will be presented to the Board of Education.
