Reed Union schools to oppose transfer petition
Trustees unanimously agreed to direct staff to draft a resolution opposing the transfer at a special board meeting Monday.
Trustees of the Reed Union School District are set to oppose a territory transfer petition by a group of district parents who live in east Corte Madera.
Trustees unanimously agreed to direct staff to draft a resolution opposing the transfer at a special board meeting Monday.
“RUSD stands in strong opposition to this territory transfer,” district superintendent Kimberly McGrath said Tuesday. “The board gave me clear direction to create a resolution in opposition, include our legal team and organize a subcommittee.”
The board cited flaws in the petition process, the relatively small proportion of families in favor of the petition in the affected neighborhood and in “valuing all three of our communities,” as reasons to oppose the petition, McGrath said.
Reed Union schools serve students in east Corte Madera, Tiburon and Belvedere. About 130 school-aged children live in the neighborhood of east Corte Madera affected by the petition. Of those, about two thirds are currently attending Reed Union schools. The remaining approximately 40 students at 27 households are attending schools in the Larkspur-Corte Madera School District.
The first of two public hearings on the petition is set for 6 p.m. Wednesday at Cove School, 330 Golden Hind Passage, Corte Madera. The second hearing will be 6 p.m. Dec. 15 at Del Mar Middle School gymnasium, 105 Avenida Miraflores, Tiburon.
Both hearings will be before members of the Marin County Committee on School District Organization, a special county panel that deals specifically with requests for school district boundary line changes.
The neighborhood affected by the petition includes 19 streets in east Corte Madera within the historic Reed Union district boundaries. Since Cove School opened in 2014, some families are closer to Cove, a Larkspur-Corte Madera district school.
The petitioners want their children to be guaranteed attendance at Cove and at Hall Middle School, also in Larkspur-Corte Madera district. They are asking Marin County to redraw the boundary lines for their neighborhood so they would become part of the Larkspur-Corte Madera School District.
Some neighbors whose children are going to Reed Union schools have voiced strong opposition to becoming part of the Larkspur-Corte Madera School District. Some have said publicly that they bought their homes specifically because they were part of the Reed Union School District.
The petitioners have so far relied on a prior interdistrict transfer agreement for their children to attend the schools in Larkspur-Corte Madera, but the current agreement with Reed Union ends in June — meaning there would be no guarantees for those students after that. Talks fell apart earlier this month on a new long-term agreement for interdistrict transfers after the two sides could not come together on financial terms for the pact.
Brett Geithman, superintendent at Larkspur-Corte Madera, said Tuesday that he has not made any recommendation to his board of trustees about the petition.
He said he would need to “look into the implications” of the petition before taking a position. Those could include such issues as the impacts to existing bond funds, parcel taxes, property taxes and whether Larkspur-Corte Madera would shift from its current community-funded status to a state-funded arrangement if the petition were approved.
Community-funded districts, also known as basic aid districts, are financed by local property taxes. State-funded districts — or local control funding formula districts — are financed by the state on a per-student subsidy basis.
At the start of the prior interdistrict transfer agreement, Larkspur-Corte Madera was an LCFF district and so received an extra per-student subsidy from the state for each additional student it accepted from Reed Union. That was in addition to Reed Union’s contribution of property taxes and parcel taxes associated with each student’s family home.
However, Larkspur-Corte Madera has since shifted to basic aid, or community-funded, so is not receiving additional subsidies to accept more students. Geithman said he would have preferred to be able to work out a new interdistrict transfer agreement with Reed Union, but the two districts “were too far apart” on the terms of a new pact, he said.
According to Geithman, Reed Union is continuing to offer property taxes and parcel taxes to subsidize each transfer students as it did before — or a total of about $63,000 annually. Larkspur-Corte Madera was asking for a total subsidy of about $273,000 to cover per-student costs — estimated at about $6,800 per student — to make up for the loss in state per-student subsidies.
“I’m confident that the best pathway from our perspective is an agreement with Reed Union that respects the families that want to go to Larkspur-Corte Madera schools and that determines a fair compensation to educate our students,” Geithman said. “I’m disappointed that we were not able to reach an agreement.”