Letter to Superintendent Balderas
This letter was sent on Tuesday, May 28th, 2024
Dear Superintendent Balderas, Carl Mead, and Casey Waletich,
CC: BSD School Board members, the Facilities Planning Committee, Steven Sparks
We represent the Parent Teacher Organization at Raleigh Park Elementary School. Our community is incredibly alarmed by the potential closure of Raleigh Park Elementary and other community elementary schools in the eastern part of the district.
Closing supportive community schools and creating mega-schools like the proposed 750-student new Raleigh Hills Elementary will be to the detriment of our students and our neighborhoods and will have ramifications for decades to come. It is not a decision that should be made at a break-neck pace without proper research, consideration of student success metrics, or community input, especially when so many Title 1 schools are at stake.
We appreciate Steven Sparks and Shellie Bailey-Shah participating in the Q&A session at our school on May 14th, and the district-wide email titled “Populating the new Raleigh Hills Elementary School.” We especially appreciate your May 22nd email titled “Pause on Raleigh Hills Elementary Consolidation Discussion.” Thank you for canceling the Facilities Committee’s June 5th meeting. Your emails say this is the beginning of the process, and we want to work together to find a new path forward, one built on mutual trust, a transparent process, and authentic community engagement. That is not where the process is leading now.
It’s not too late for you to rebuild our trust in you and to approach the Raleigh Hills rebuild and school facility decisions in a new way. But you need to start now.
Walk the talk of the new BSD mission
This year, BSD launched a new mission promising to put students at the center of every conversation. You need to live that mission now. Put student achievements and community at the center of these conversations. Don’t make decisions void of input about student success and other elements that create educational environments that lead to student success in school and beyond in life. Consider the impact on Title 1 schools and what it means to equity within our district. The district needs to make smart decisions now so the ramifications are positive ones for our children and future generations.
Our requests
In this letter, we outline three reasonable requests of the Beaverton School District:
Decouple the multiple discussions about populating the new Raleigh Hills facility from the need to address infrastructure issues at other eastside schools
Pause the rebuild of Raleigh Hills School immediately; reconsider what plans are best for Raleigh Hills in conjunction with other facilities’ needs
Start an interactive dialogue — rebuild our trust in you and discuss the value of small- and medium-sized community elementary schools
Let us tell you more about each of these:
1. Decouple the multiple discussions about populating the new Raleigh Hills facility from the need to address infrastructure issues at other eastside schools
We are distressed by the Beaverton School District’s (BSD’s) process of proposing school closures through the Facilities Planning Committee without considering student achievement metrics or community input. We propose separating the discussion about (1) how to populate a 750-student Raleigh Hills campus with (2) how to address infrastructure issues at several older elementary school buildings on the east side of the district.
School closures are rare and should only happen after thorough research, planning, and community input. The impact of school closures is felt beyond just the school itself and extends into the community in ways that should be contemplated up front. For example, school closures reduce the number of available fields to youth sports leagues, which thereby restricts access to sports for the community.
There is no “institutional memory” of school closures in BSD; the last school closure was Sunset Valley Elementary School, which closed in 1983. We want the process to include quantitative and qualitative research and authentic and in-depth community engagement during which the School Board is genuinely willing to explore and consider new ideas.
2. Pause the rebuild of Raleigh Hills School immediately; reconsider what plans are best for Raleigh Hills in conjunction with other facilities’ needs
You must immediately halt the rebuild of Raleigh Hills School to allow for these other discussions to happen. Decisions that impact the future of our students’ success and our school facilities don’t happen in a vacuum, and if you move forward with the Raleigh Hills construction of a 750-student mega-school, you force decisions that will change the district for the next several decades.
You are within your legal rights to shift how the 2022 bond funds are spent. You are also within BSD facility guidelines to build to a capacity different from your adopted ED-SPEC. BSD is doing exactly this with the new Beaverton High School construction. We encourage you to think more broadly and strategically than the current plan for a 750-student mega-school at Raleigh Hills. Do not overlook the bond funds designated for deferred maintenance at several other elementary schools. We have researched several reasonable alternatives for how the bond money could be spent in ways that put our students’ best interests first and support our neighborhoods while taking into account enrollment statistics and forecasts. We would be happy to share our ideas with you.
3. Start an open and interactive dialogue — rebuild our trust in you and discuss the value of small and medium-sized community elementary schools
This process is not off to a good start, and we don’t have much faith in the currently outlined district process. To name just a few of the many reasons:
We were blindsided when we learned about the possible closure of our school through word-of-mouth. Within three days of first learning about our potential closure, more than 300 community members — Raleigh Park students, parents, and neighbors alike — joined our May 14th PTO meeting to show their support to save our school and ask questions about this process. Numerous conversations online (on Facebook and NextDoor, for example) are filled with passionate neighbors organizing to save community schools and preserve the supportive nature of our neighborhood.
Title 1 schools, like Raleigh Park, are disproportionately impacted by the scenarios the Facilities Committee was considering; whether this is intentional or not, it could be devastating to so many students who need the extra support provided by Title 1 funds. The current proposal does not align with the objective to “Do no harm” to our Title 1 schools, and is contrary to the district’s strategy to support Title 1 schools and their students.
Voters were misled when you solicited our support for the 2022 bond. You did not include any mention of school closures as a result of rebuilding Raleigh Hills Elementary. Furthermore, previous BSD construction of 750-student elementary schools did not result in the closure of neighboring schools. You were not forthcoming in this context about Raleigh Hills’ transition to K-5 from K-8. Focus group participants asked for clarity around impact and the BSD team chose not to clarify in their bond communications. Also based on focus group research, you even went so far as to purposefully exclude language about potential school consolidations and closures to ensure the passing of the bond.
The bond was advertised in direct mail, on your website, and through leading news media as a K-8 rebuild, but is now a K-5 rebuild. This erodes trust in the broader voter community in a dangerous way. The district relies on bond funds, and future bonds will face significant challenges and scrutiny because of your actions around this 2022 bond.
The scope of the Facilities Committee shifted from when you first recruited members, so that committee preparing a recommendation to Superintendent Balderas did that without representation from any of the impacted schools or any schools within the impacted Board Zones. While we appreciate that you are determining a new process for these facilities issues, any new committees need to have representation from the impacted areas.
There are many conversations we need to have, but one of the most important is about the value community schools bring to students, their families, and the surrounding neighborhoods. We are staunch supporters of public schools, and we believe that community schools like Raleigh Park should be at the heart of the elementary education experience our students have in Beaverton. Closing them and building mega-schools is not the right direction.
Since the district isn’t clear on why ED-SPEC has been set at 750 students, we encourage the district to reevaluate the strategy. Why consolidate community schools into mega-schools when research shows the benefits of smaller, community elementary schools? What is best for our students? How can school designs reflect the needs of the different communities? What works well for one neighborhood might not be the best solution for another.
The best way to illustrate the importance of community schools is to tell you about Raleigh Park Elementary — the word on the street is that Raleigh Park is a “gem”, and it’s for good reason:
Raleigh Park is a Title 1 school with an incredibly strong community with a “WE” mentality over a “ME” mentality.
Our school grounds are a vibrant center of our community. Our fields are filled with multiple sports teams practicing with stacked time slots on the weekdays and games on the weekends.
Kids ride their bikes and walk to school. This year, we added a Spring “Bike Rodeo” to reinforce bike safety for our students commuting to school on bikes.
Our students are supported by over 330 volunteers on our roster; that’s more than our current student enrollment.
Our community garden enriches science lessons and classroom learning and offers a calming sensory environment.
Our teachers have exceptional tenure, which means they build meaningful relationships with siblings and families over the years.
Our robust aftercare program, one of the last community-run programs at Beaverton schools, provides affordable, licensed, on-site childcare, as well as scholarships for many families who need it.
A record-breaking 58% of eligible students participated in OBOB this year, and a church a few blocks from school hosted our regional tournament.
We put on an annual school play, offer an after school choir and violin lessons, and welcomed five New York Times bestselling authors who spoke with our students and built a culture of reading in our school.
Our PTO and volunteers provide thousands of pieces of fruit for healthy snacks, weekly backpacks full of food for families, and clothes in our own “Tiger Den” clothes closet.
There is so much about our community school that transforms the lives of our students, their families, and our neighborhood. It would be an incredible loss if you were to close Raleigh Park Elementary. We invite you to visit our school, we’d be happy to show you all that it offers.
Thank you for considering our requests. We look forward to more conversations.
Sincerely,
Jade Gonzales, President
Erin Baker, Treasurer
Teddy Black, Communications Chair
Lindsey Carlson, School Play Chair
Justin Darling, Vice President
Rachel Dixon, Field Day Chair
Lindsey Gibson, Volunteer Co-Coordinator
Brenda Ramsay, Secretary
Lori Russell, Art Literacy Coordinator
Talya Sanders, Past Communications Coordinator
Amber Stater, Fundraising
Liz Terzo, Volunteer Co-Coordinator
Sara Gardner-Smith, outgoing RPASCA President (2016-2024)
Megan McMillan, incoming Raleigh Park After School Association (RPASCA) President
Karen Mather, RPASCA Secretary