San Benito High School District Superintendent John Perales would like to see the Hollister School District and the San Benito High School District unify, he told the Free Lance in an interview.
He said a parent recently asked him about the number of districts in the county.
“And the parent is an educator in another city and I guess lives in Hollister and they asked me, ‘Why are there so many districts?’” he said. “And honestly, I don’t have an answer for it.”
San Benito County has 28 mainstream public schools and 11 districts serving the students of Hollister, San Juan Bautista, Aromas and Paicines. Several of the districts have just one campus within their boundaries including Jefferson School near Pinnacles National Park where one classroom serves students in grades K-8.
The annual county committee on school district organization met Sept. 29 and selected a new chairperson but had not received any petitions for district consolidations, reported Krystal Lomanto, the county superintendent in an email to the Free Lance.
“In the early days, probably the late 1800s and early 1900s, there were a lot of school districts here in San Benito County,” said Kathy Stewart, who worked as the executive administrative assistant for the county office of education for more than 44 years. “They built them like three miles apart so that students wouldn’t have to walk more than six miles a day to walk to and from school.”
Monica Barragan, the current executive administrative assistant for the San Benito County Office of Education, found records showing there were 32 school districts in 1896, after opening the oldest book she could find, she explained by email to the Free Lance.
Barragan randomly selected other books including one for 1940—about 44 years later—and found there were 31 districts. By 1986, the list had dwindled to the current 11 names.
The San Benito County Office of Education cannot stipulate a reduction in school districts. State law requires local stakeholders to initiate a merger and the majority of local voters to approve it, according to a report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The consolidation process can begin with a petition signed by 25 percent of the electorate, a petition signed by the majority of school board members at the affected districts, or a plan from the County Committee on School District Organization, according to the same report. Eventually, the local
electorate must approve the consolidation.
Gary McIntire, the superintendent of the Hollister School District, supported doing what makes sense for taxpayers and students in terms of a district merger, he said.
“There’s just so many different things that would factor into it that you’d need to look into before you make decisions,” he said.
Perales, who grew up as a student in the Gilroy Unified School District where he was later a teacher, principal and district administrator, called combining districts a “win-win” situation.
“I’m very much in favor of it,” he said. “I would just need to do the research to see what the cost analysis are.”
Perales mentioned that people sometimes struggle with reorganization and losing power and noted the two school boards would have to transition into one governing body. The cost savings to the district from eliminating duplicate administrative salaries could easily be almost $400,000, he said.
“You honestly go from two superintendents to one,” Perales said. “You go from two H.R. directors to one. The cost savings has to be there.”
High school teachers would also have a better idea of what is being taught in middle schools, Perales said. But the district would need to look at long-term issues of the situation such as maintenance workers having to travel farther to reach all the sites, the superintendent said.
McIntire highlighted some of the same pluses—including fewer administrator salaries to pay and more seamless curriculum across the grades—but added the districts would need to review boundaries, which don’t match perfectly; consolidate salary schedules and benefit payments for employees; work out the details of a shared public transportation system; and investigate how state funding would change.
High school districts get more funding per pupil than elementary school districts and unified ones get a rate that is in between, McIntire explained. The superintendent added that all Hollister School District campuses feed into the high school district, but so do schools such as Spring Grove and Southside, which belong to other districts.
“So would students in Southside and Spring Grove, would they continue to be separate districts from a unified standpoint?” the superintendent said.
The San Benito County Grand Jury examined the idea of consolidating districts about four or five years ago, McIntire said.
“You might save money but you really have to conduct a thorough study of it to find out if it fiscally makes sense,” McIntire said.
