In the coming years, Cupertino High School is expected to see more students and Lynbrook High School is expected to see fewer students.
To address this impending imbalance, the Fremont Union High School District is considering shifting a piece of the Cupertino High attendance area to Lynbrook High.
The district’s plan was unveiled to residents during a Nov. 16 community meeting in the Lynbrook auditorium with superintendent Polly Bove and other district officials on hand to explain the plan and the data behind the proposed shift.
The area in question is bounded by Lawrence Expressway to the west, Interstate 280 to the north, Williams Road to the south and the district boundary line to the east. Students living in this area of San Jose currently attend Cupertino High but could be transferred to Lynbrook in the future if the plan is approved by the district’s board of trustees. A decision has not been made about the shift, and the options are still in the “exploratory stage,” according to district officials.
“This issue is something we’ve been looking into for a couple years now. We are expected to grow by nearly 1,200 students as a district by the year 2020-2021,” said Jason Crutchfield, the district’s director of business services. “Every school in our district is projected to grow except [Lynbrook]. It’s actually projected to shrink, and that’s what we’re trying to prevent.”
Lynbrook High is expected to decline by 216 students in the next five years, while Cupertino High is expected to gain approximately 600 students. “Sometimes smaller is not better when you’re talking about high schools,” Bove said. “And sometimes too large isn’t good either, so the option we’re trying to hit here is more of an optimal number so that we can continue to serve the students that are within the boundaries of the Fremont Union High School District as well as we possibly can.”
If the district’s boundary shift goes into effect, the change would be mandatory beginning for the 2018-19 school year. Until then, families in the proposed shift area would be free to choose between attending Lynbrook or ‘Tino.
“Our main goal is to take care of kids and take care of families. We’re going to try to work with you,” Crutchfield told attendees. “We certainly aren’t going to split families, and we certainly aren’t going to force kids to move from one school to another.”
Crutchfield said that there are consequences of a school being too small, and some of the effects are already being felt at Lynbrook.
“There were 74 fewer students [this year] than last year. That caused 15 fewer classes to be offered at Lynbrook just this year,” he said. “The more students you get, the more classes you get to offer your students. If this reduction continues until 2021, 42 classes will have to be reduced on the Lynbrook master schedule.”
Among the classes lost this year are four electives and 11 core sections. Crutchfield said the projected decline in enrollment could mean eight fewer teachers and a reduction of approximately $280,000 in the school budget for Lynbrook.
Meeting attendees could ask the district questions, but only by filling out cards, which some attendees found frustrating. Some wanted to speak up and ask their questions aloud.
“Make this session interactive. This is stupid,” yelled one person. “You are deciding which questions to answer or not. It doesn’t make sense.”
Some walked out of the meeting after expressing anger with the process.
Bove invited those at the meeting to voice concerns and ask questions by emailing the district. She said questions that weren’t answered at the meeting would be put on the district website in a “frequently asked questions” section.
Among the most common questions were those related to high-density housing and impacts from the proposed The Hills at Vallco project. Questions were asked about the accuracy of data compiled by the demographer.
“Predictions we have about growth are in all six cities that we touch,” said Bove of the questions related to population growth in Cupertino. “There are lots of places we have to consider growth. The attendance area staying small has to do with how many people are staying in their homes.”
Crutchfield said that the demographer, who also does studies for the Cupertino Union School District and the city of Cupertino, has less than 1 percent error in one-year projections, and 97 percent accuracy in five-year projections.
As of press time, future meetings about the boundary shift had not yet been announced.
For more information, visit fuhsd.org.
