Since 2015, the number of students in Santa Rosa has dropped from approximately 28,000 to less than 25,000 today, a 10% drop.

Looking at current enrollment by grade level allows us to get a picture of how enrollment will change moving forward.

If an area has more students in the lower grades than they do the upper grades than enrollment is likely to increase as the larger cohorts replace the smaller cohorts that are graduating.

If the opposite is true, with a greater number of students in higher grades than in lower grades, enrollment is likely to decrease. As the larger enrollment upper grades graduate, they are replaced by the smaller enrollment cohorts behind them.

We are projected to continue to decline in enrollment, as Santa Rosa has greater enrollment in the higher grades than they do in the lower ones.

As enrollment goes down, so does funding. As funding decreases, essential programs and staff are cut, and our students and communities suffer.

As enrollment has decreased, school districts have begun to close schools.

School districts must also close in order to best serve our students. Desparate to reduce costs, districts are cutting supports, programs and everything that is not legally protected. This leads to worse outcomes for our students and community.

Santa Rosa City Schools had a report created in 2021/22 with possible school district mergers in the city. The report, which cost $200,000 and took over 2,000 hours of research, came up with 3 scenarios.

Scenario 1 was the least financially viable option: a full district merger of all 9 districts in Santa Rosa into one. It would lead to a 21.3 million dollar loss in revenue. This was the proposal SRCS Board voted to move forward with.

Scenario 2 was a far better option. It created two districts which together would have increased revenue generation and cost efficiencies of a combined 29 million dollars.

There are even better options that would have similar positive financial outlooks while retaining local control for different parts of the city.

These studies are at no cost to the Santa Rosa districts, SCOE pays for them.

We think the best option will be some combination of 3 school districts in Santa Rosa, down from the current 8, with Kenwood remaining its own district.

Early research suggests 3 TK-12 districts:

1. North/East-

Rincon Valley USD, Mark West USD, Hidden Valley and Procter Terrace Elementary. Montgomery and Maria Carrillo HS. Rincon Valley MS.

Possibly Bennett Valley.

2. Southwest-

Roseland USD, Wright USD, Bellevue USD, Elsie Allen HS, Cesar Chavez MS

3. Central/Northwest

Piner Olivet USD, SRCS Elementary District, Piner MS/HS, Santa Rosa MS/HS

We need more data so that we can best determine how to increase funding for our schools. SCOE(Sonoma County Office of Education) will be releasing an extensive Enrollment Study at the beginning of December.

We are not tied down to this specific proposal, what we want is more funding for our children.

We believe(and our research suggests) that medium sized districts are best for the quality of education and community. They have many of the advantages without the disadvantages of both large and small districts.