School board may adjust graduation requirements

Sonoma Valley school board trustees will meet via teleconference Tuesday to discuss a broad array of topics including adjusting graduation requirements, reviewing a student survey, commissioning a study to review the organizational structure of the district office, and the elimination of the school resource officer program.

The board of trustees will engage in a discussion about making temporary or long-term changes to graduation requirements, including waiving the requirement for the Senior Project for 2022 seniors.

The debate about the efficacy and scheduling around the Senior Project was requested in February, 2020, by the students’ high school representative, before the pandemic broke out. And by March, the pandemic curtailed the requirement for 2020’s graduating seniors. The class of 2021 got a pass, too.

The Senior Project began in 1997 and in 2000 was made part of graduation requirements. It is a year-long rigorous project that some began to feel impeded seniors from being able to focus on preparing to apply to colleges and other activities.

In addition to potentially eliminating the Senior Project, trustees will hear about other changes to scheduling, such as integrating “living skills” into the physical education program for this school year and spend the 2021-22 school year implementing the curriculum going forward.

Organizational review of the district office

Board members will be asked to approve a contract with Engage School Services of California to conduct a review of the district’s organizational structure, total compensation study for certain administrators and a comparative analysis of staffing.

“It’s not uncommon for districts to periodically take a look at organizational charts” and do comparative analyses with districts of similar size and characteristics, said Melanie Blake, president of the Sonoma Valley Unified School District board.

This is a good time to have such a study conducted, said Bruce Abbott, associate superintendent, while the search for a new superintendent is underway.

A third-party analysis will provide some “clarity” on how a district such as Sonoma Valley’s should look and operate. It will help identify if there are too many or too few directors, for example, or if positions such as associate superintendent are structured properly or needed, Abbott said.

The study will be done and the “data will be available for consideration” for the new superintendent, Blake said.

The search for the new superintendent is “following our timeline,” Blake said, and several different stakeholder groups have given input to help inform the board as it develops interview questions. Interviews will begin sometime in late April.

School resource officer

The district eliminated the school resource officer position at the high school after the City of Sonoma declined to fund and renew the contract with the school district, Abbott said. The position was jointly provided for by the county, city and school district, but when the city announced late last year that it was not going to renew the contract, the district decided to “look at other options,” Abbott said.

The school resource officer program was in place to help kids who are “headed in the wrong direction” get put back on track, he said. It was a successful program for the high school, he said.

Essentially a police officer was doing social work, Abbott said, a topic that has become “a political hot potato.”

The officer would intervene and refer a student to the Youth and Family Services Program, which is a diversion program. The district is now gathering input on how to structure the referral process and continue to provide support services without the school resource officer position.

Trustees will discuss how that position benefited the high school, how the district can ensure the service needs of students and staff are met, how to continue to have a safety net, Blake said.

“We need to reimagine that service delivery.”

The district did not have the position in place during distance learning.

The board meeting will begin at 5 p.m. and can be live-streamed via sonomatv.org or Zoom.SVUSD.org.

Contact Anne at anne.ernst@sonomanews.com.