City Watch: Sebastopol schools welcome more students at start of year
Also, the start of WESCO youth soccer and emergency radio training
Enrollment is Up at Local Public Schools
The good news at the start of the school year is that enrollment in local schools is up. While the numbers are preliminary, officials at West County Union High School District (which includes Analy High School) and Sebastopol Union School District (which includes Park Side Elementary and Brook Haven Middle School) were surprised to see more students than were expected, some waiting until the last minute to enroll.
Sara Gramm, Superintendent of Sebastopol Union, said in an interview on Friday that the District “is seeing huge growth.” The District has more than 50 new students at the start of the school year for a total of 486 students. There are new students in all grades. Gramm said that turnover in housing is potentially responsible for the growth. “I see more families walking their children to school from the surrounding neighborhoods,” she said. Gramm added that she’s noticed that some parents who went to Park Side as kids but now live in West Santa Rosa and have enrolled their children,
Gramm is expecting even more students to come when the Woodmark Apartments begins accepting residents. “When new housing comes online, we will have to add new classes.” For now, the District can deal with the challenges faced by the increase but she does forsee ongoing challenges as the school reaches the limits of the physical campus itself. (I’ll follow separately with a story on the reasons Sebastopol Union will place Measure N on the November ballot.)
At Analy High School, Principal Chuck Wade said that there were about 40 new students at the start of school and it might be more.
“We gained some students after the first week last year,” said Wade on Friday. “I just saw a new student just joined us today. So I think we may still gain a few.” (A longer interview with Wade will be published later this week.)
Analy had 1,466 students last year, and the budget projection presented to the board for this year estimated that the total would stay the same. (link). Other studies have projected that enrollment would decline steadily so the rise in student enrollment is somewhat unexpected.
Here are a few pics during the first day of school at Analy:
Opening day for youth soccer
On Saturday morning, there were long lines outside of Ragle Park as a steady stream of cars brought parents and children for the opening day of recreational youth soccer games. Youth soccer in this area is organized by WESCO, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. The Under 6 teams are the youngest in the league.
Two girls’ teams were playing on the new field that WESCO paid to improve last year. The main field, which was dried out because it is used for parking during the Gravenstein Apple Fair, was not in the best shape. Still new field was a lot better than the old field, which the gophers had taken over.
Good turnout for handheld radio training
On Sunday morning, a group of 80 people or so plus 20 volunteers came together at the Youth Annex to learn more about the use of handheld radios during emergencies. Skip Jirrels of the Sebastopol Neighborhood Communications Unit (SNCU) opened the joint meeting with North Bay Communications Cooperative, which handed out radios and provided volunteers to lead the training sessions. Calvin Sandeen of Wi-Conduit, a nonprofit behind the North Bay Communications Cooperative, said that a survey of outages during the 2017 fires showed the two most reliable forms of communications were radios and landlines.
Mayor Diana Rich welcomed everyone and said the turnout was “amazing but not surprising.” A show of hands indicated that many of the people in attendance were from outside the Sebastopol city limits. Johannes Hoevertsz, the director of Sonoma Public Infrastructure, was also on hand to show support for the efforts.
The larger group broke into smaller groups to learn the basics of operating a handheld GMRS radio. Information from Wi-conduit is available online that answers basic questions about using GMRS handheld radios.
“The ‘Enhanced Radio Basics Class’ today was the largest gathering yet of local area residents taking the time to learn to use handheld radios during emergencies,” said Jirrels.
