About, this worry amongst the Hill School parents that their hill schools will erode. I attended Montera and Skyline when I was a kid (80′s), and everyone was up in arms about “bussing” back then and how the quality of education was worse each year. With the perspective of decades watching this school system it is clear that these arguments are nonsense. If the Hill Schools really were under siege all these years, there would be no difference between them and the schools in the flats after all these years. The truth is that folks in the hills feel like they are under siege. Its an us versus them mentality. Trust me. I knew. I grew up here. My parents grew up here, as did their parents and grandparents. Its the same story from each generation. I remember my grandma telling me about how Redwood Heights was not what it used to be. HAH! Its presently one of the top rated schools.

There ARE exclusive schools with competitive admissions policies for parents like Nextset to send their children to. They’re called Private Schools.

Thank you!

Emily

I believe the enrollment committee begins meeting again in August or September. No dates are posted yet, but here’s a link to the board calendar: http://bex.ousd.k12.ca.us/CALENDAR.htm

In case you didn’t see the explanation I posted last month on the topic of megaboundaries, here it is again:

“The board also approved middle school-area “megaboundaries” Wednesday night. These boundaries correspond with middle school attendance areas, but they only come into play for elementary school enrollment.

Nothing has changed at the middle school level, and no elementary school attendance boundaries have been moved — yet.

Megaboundaries apply to children who don’t get into their neighborhood school because of overcrowding. Before, there was no clear policy on what would happen to kids redirected from their home schools, such as Hillcrest.

Now, for example, a neighborhood kid who doesn’t get into Hillcrest will have an admissions advantage at any elementary school that feeds into Claremont Middle School (Hillcrest’s megaboundary). That child will have be third in line, so to speak, at Chabot, Peralta, or other elementary schools within that megaboundary, after the siblings and neighborhood kids of those schools are admitted.

1) siblings of current students
2) neighborhood kids with no siblings at the school
3) kids who didn’t get into their neighborhood school, who live within the megaboundary
4) kids who attend Program Improvement schools
5) open lottery

Make sense?”

Thank you

It’s (very) dangerous to go through life thinking you can sue your way to happiness. Living your life to avoid litigation and avoiding entanglement in the courts is very important, especially if you run a business. My reason for saying this is that I’m a lawyer and I deal with people constantly who thought they could live life on the margins and take their chances in court – divorce, taxes, criminal law, liability litigation, estate (non) planning, all of it. Trust me, they are everyone of them furious at the way things turn out when the courts finish with them. Even if they “win” it’s expensive and frustrating.

If education is important to you, what was your analysis of cost/benefit before you purchased a home in OUSD? Did you consider an alternative home in a superior school district, or a budget contingency for private schooling (such as church schools, etc?).

The odds are the quality of the CA public schools will get worse, not better. A change in policy keeping your child from going to a neighborhood school is just another deterioration in the “quality” of public schooling. Something like this just isn’t unexpected. Hopefully you can manage to get your child in your neighborhood school – but next time it will just be something else that deteriorates. The trends are visible – but you may still be able to navigate your child to an acceptable end in OUSD in spite of any problems. Your exact odds I don’t know.