Evergreen School Board to Consider Realigning School Boundaries

By Jessie Mangaliman, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Oct. 18–Hundreds of parents are expected to attend an Evergreen school board meeting tonight to ask district officials to delay a boundary re-alignment while it cracks down on non-residents who attend overcrowded elementary schools.

The Evergreen School District, which serves one of the fastest growing neighborhoods in the county, is in the middle of re-drawing boundaries for its school districts to address overcrowding at some elementary and middle schools.

But a group of parents, the Evergreen Parents Task Force, say that part of the overcrowding is the result of non-residents attending district schools. The parents group is asking the school board to conduct an annual “proof of residence” check, similar to those in Cupertino, Fremont and Palo Alto. The check as proposed would also be stricter, requiring more documents to prove residency.

“I have paid taxes in this neighborhood for a long time,” said parent Shirley Miao, whose 7-year-old daughter, Althea, is a second-grader at Tom Matsumoto Elementary School. Under the proposed boundary re-alignment, 210 students, including Miao’s daughter, will be zoned-out of Matsumoto and be forced to attend a school outside of their neighborhood.

“When it came time for the schools to be here for me and my family, it’s not there,” said Miao, one of scores of parents who plan to attend tonight’s meeting at J.F. Smith Elementary School, another school experiencing overcrowding.

At the very least, a strict annual residency check would give the district a more accurate picture of overcrowding and enrollment statistics, said parent Ketan Deshpande, a software engineer who has two children attending Matsumoto.

“The district is using incorrect demographic data to draw new boundaries,” Deshpande said. “There are people who are cheating the system.”

After the parents submitted its proposal last month, the district looked at the residency verification requirements of other school districts such as Berryessa, Oak Grove and Franklin McKinley, said Kathy Gomez, the district’s director of educational services.

Parents told board members “that what we require from parents is not strict enough,” Gomez said.

Under the current system, the families of first-time students are required to submit two forms of documents such as utility bills, a driver’s license or a paycheck stub.

No one knows the exact size of non-residents attending schools in the Evergreen district. But Deshpande and many parents say one way to find out is for the district to conduct an annual residence check.

This year, the district asked 56 families to move their children from Matsumoto to another school because Matsumoto, designed for 850 students now has 920. Under pressure from parents, the district conducted a residency check and in the end 17 families — Miao’s included — were allowed to stay at Matsumoto.

School district boundary re-alignment is a thorny issue everywhere. But in a district sought by parents for its good schools — Matsumo for example has an API score of 924 out of a scale of 1,000 — the competition for student space is fierce.

Schools in the southeast pocket of Evergreen District — Matsumoto, Clark Elementary School, Chaboya Middle School — are over capacity, while schools in another neighborhood on the west side of the district, have under-enrollment, Gomez said.

In the summer, district Superintendent Cliff Black formed a committee to study the re-alignment. Public hearings are scheduled next month.

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