One-room Union School trustees hear feedback on where to send Petaluma-area students

What is to become of the 121-year-old clapboard one-room school house, one of the last in the North Bay and the last of its kind serving Sonoma County residents?|

Tuesday night’s Union Joint School District board meeting was a bit different than most held for the tiny rural district in the hills southwest of Petaluma.

Instead of the usual one or two people who show up for the board’s public meetings, about 40 residents packed in to the historic one-room Union School, just over the Marin County line on Red Hill Road.

The question up for discussion on the night: What is to become of the 121-year-old clapboard one-room school house, one of the last in the North Bay and the last of its kinds serving Sonoma County residents?

Because of dwindling attendance numbers - this year only seven students are enrolled - and related budget issues, the school faced closure in 2016, rescued only by the additional enrollment of three students last year.

But that was just a temporary holdover and the school is now set to close, either at the end of this school year or next. At Tuesday night’s meeting, board members heard pitches from two nearby rural school districts, each vying to incorporate Union School’s students: the Wilmar Union Elementary School District, which operates Wilson Elementary School; and the Lincoln School District, which operates Lincoln School, the state’s oldest ongoing one-room schoolhouse, located nearby on Hicks Valley Road in Marin County.

“I was happy to see so many in our community who came out to speak on behalf of the district. I have a lot to think about,” said board president Diane Rowley, who has served for 22 years and is also a Union alumna.

“I have a difficult task in front of me, and I just hope to make the best decision for the students and the community where I’ve lived all my life,” she said. “It’s serious.”

The main difference between the two districts is school size. In addition, the loss of a one-room schoolhouse education is something to consider, attendees said. While about 240 students are enrolled at the K-6 Wilson Elementary School this year, just 12 students attend the K-6 Lincoln School.

Mark Pomi, a former Union Joint School District board member who attended Union in the 1980s, argued for the preservation of that one-room schoolhouse atmosphere.

“We talk about (what’s best for) the students, and while we have current students, we also have students out there that we don’t know of yet, and I think we need to be thinking about them also,” he said. “I want to see the community give the opportunity to those futures students we don’t know about yet - the opportunity to attend a one-room schoolhouse.”

Other residents brought up the questionable future of Lincoln School, and whether it might face the same fate as Union School.

Kelly Garzelli, a mother to two near-school-aged children, was one of them.

“I think the most important thing is the future of the kids in the district,” she said. “I likely see that in the future, Lincoln will no longer be supported by the state funding-wise. So although it looks good now, it could change. I think we really need to focus on the long term for the students, and I think we need to choose Wilson. It is bigger. It has more students. And it’s just more logical for the future of our kids.”

The board is set to make a decision at its April 3 meeting.

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