Effective fall of 2009, Excelsior and Eureka elementary schools will see a sharp decline in student attendance.

During the May 10 board meeting, the Eureka School District Board of Trustees approved the plan to close down the two elementary schools.

The district hopes to consolidate Ridgeview and Oakhills elementary schools into a possible charter school. A petition for the proposal is scheduled to be presented during the June 17 board meeting.

According to Eureka Superintendent Bob Schultz, the move has been in the works for some time now.

“A couple of years ago with declining enrollment we knew we could probably get by with fewer schools,” Schultz said. “That was money we knew we could use in other ways.”

The decline in student enrollment is at the heart of the decision to close the schools because it not only makes the extra schools superfluous, it also leads to a decrease in funding that makes it difficult to maintain the facilities.

According the Schultz, the district will save $900,000 a year as a result of the closing of the two schools.

The process of deciding the fate of Excelsior and Eureka started last year.

The district assembled a 32-man task force to investigate and discuss ways to handle the financial impact of decreasing student enrollment.

“(The group) met about 10 different times and (closing Eureka and Excelsior) was one of the recommendations they came up with” Schultz said.

The final decision was made by the school board, which got plenty of input from the Granite Bay community as well.

Two meetings were held in the spring, one at Granite Bay High School, the other at the Eureka district office. The one at Granite Bay had, according to Schultz, about 400 people in attendance, while the one at the district office had about half that.

“The board shared the general idea (of) closing a couple schools and everything we had in the plan,” Schultz said. “We got input, heard from people and parents.”

A month later the board made the final decision to close both Eureka and Excelsior elementary schools.

The district’s plan to realign its schools is fairly simple.

Cavitt Junior High School and Olympus Junior High School, previously for only seventh and eighth graders, will become traditional middle schools by adding a sixth-grade class.

Greenhills and Maidu, which are currently K-3, schools will expand to K-5.

The only uneasy transition in the plan concerns students who are currently in the third grade.

Because the decision only comes into effect in 2009, third graders next year will attend Excelsior and Eureka. After finishing the fourth grade, those students, along with others, will go back to their respective elementary schools.

Fifth graders moving up to the sixth grade will then go to either Olympus or Cavitt.

“In a way, though the third graders from Maidu are moving around, essentially they’re moving with all of the same kids,” Excelsior principal Diane Duncan said.

According to Duncan, closing down Excelsior was a difficult decision seeing as how it is a newer campus.

“It’s a beautiful campus, but (it) needs a kindergarten wing,” Duncan said. “It needs a place for kindergartners, and we’re not currently configured for that.”

There will not be any downsizing, Maidu principal Jennifer Platt said. There will be, however, a considerable amount of reshuffling.

Though the closing schools will be leased out, the teachers and staff, according to Schultz, must be shifted to different campuses.

Platt, for instance, will, as of next year, be the principal at Cavitt.

“There are reductions in teachers due to the realignment of the schools,” Platt said. “Basically, the teachers will move with the student population.”

With the addition of several teachers, students and staff members to Maidu, Greenhills, Olympus and Cavitt, a factor in the decision to close Excelsior and Eureka was the size of the remaining schools.

“One of the things the district office did was look at each of the campuses and their capacity and looked at whether or not those campuses could support the higher enrollment and all the campuses that will remain open can,” Platt said.

Because Maidu used to be a K-5 school, it seemed logical to keep the campus. However, according to Duncan, if Excelsior is able to build a kindergarten-friendly wing, there is a possibility of closing Maidu and reopening Excelsior.

Additionally, should enrollment increase in the future, the leased buildings could be reopened as schools once more.

For now, however, the board doesn’t anticipate reversing its decision.

“As opposed to seeing this as a negative where we have to make cuts, we saw this as an opportunity to really take a look at who we are as a district and what pieces we want to maintain,” Duncan said. “(We saw) what is positive about the district, like our strong alliance with families and strong community support – and what pieces we might want to change so that our schools are more responsive to students’ needs.”