Another showing of Groundhog Day

Remember the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day, where the main character has to keep living the same day over and over again? Yeah, tonight’s RUSD board meeting was kind of like that.

You see, way back last September (9/11 to be exact) the board started seriously talking about redistricting. To redistrict, the board had to decide if it was going to listen to the community and return to neighborhood schools or expand busing for racial and socio-economic status. To get a better idea of where the children are living, the board decided to hire a demographer. The board wanted to test the theories of neighborhood schools and ordered a report that would show where the children are in relation to the schools. They were told by administration the first baseline report would take 4-5 weeks, so at the latest the board should have seen the report by the end of October.

Now in January, 3 months later, the board finally sees the baseline report and it is not the report they asked for. Communication wires got crossed, again! So tonight the board again asked for a report from the demographer with the following parameters:

1. Children will attend the closest reasonable school provided there is capacity.
2. There will be an opt-out option if the parents do not want to send their child to the neighborhood school.
3. All the Unified buildings were thrown back in the mix, including the now closed Caddy Vista and Winslow and the magnet school buildings (including Janes Elementary – the year-around school).

This is virtually the same language that was used on 9/11 but this is not what the board received last Thursday at their study session. Now we will have to wait 5 more weeks for this scenario before “testing” another? Is it any wonder that the wheels of government roll slowly?