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Declining enrollment has prompted the Belmont-Redwood Shores School District to consider closing one of its middle schools.
During a district board meeting at Sandpiper School on Wednesday, Jan. 21, teachers, parents and students from that campus community showed up en masse to express deep concerns about possibly losing their middle-school program.
“Our community works tirelessly to create a safe, inclusive environment where students can thrive,” Sandpiper sixth-grade teacher Francesca Karkoski said, addressing the board at the meeting packed with more than 100 attendees.
“As the district is considering changes,” she said, “I ask you to weigh the relationships, routines and supports that make Sandpiper a home for so many families and our team.”
The board is scheduled Jan. 29 to hold another public hearing on the potential middle-school reconfiguration before a final decision is expected Feb. 12.
Currently, the district offers three middle-school programs. Ralston Middle is a comprehensive school serving sixth through eighth grade in Belmont. Sandpiper in Redwood Shores and Nesbit in Belmont are smaller schools that serve transitional kindergarten through eighth grade.
According to a district report last month, Ralston has 1,099 students this school year, while Sandpiper enrolls 123 middle schoolers with 45 seats available, and Nesbit has 135 with room for 33.
“Sustainability of three middle schools is becoming increasingly less feasible,” the report said. “We will have approximately 290 fewer students in six years; the size of both of our small middle schools (is) under capacity.”
The report outlined options for reconfiguring the middle schools, including dropping the program housed at either Sandpiper or Nesbit – a strategy that could be done as early as the next academic year.
Another option would be to restructure all the middle schools into two small comprehensive sites, the report said, but this approach “requires much more community engagement and planning than can be done in a year.”
According to the report, a districtwide survey showed that nearly 48 percent of respondents were open to just one small middle school program instead of two alongside Ralston, while 33 percent were unsure, and the rest were hesitant.
But the survey indicated that district families “are almost four times more likely to choose Ralston as their school of choice over Sandpiper and Nesbit,” the report said.
“When we look at enrollments at our middle schools, particularly our small middle schools – Nesbit and Sandpiper, we have never fully optimized enrollment at either,” district Superintendent Dan Deguara said during the meeting.
The district has tried “several things to boost enrollment,” such as offering different kinds of educational programs – including the International Baccalaureate program and before- and after-school language classes – Deguara said. However, the district consistently has “still not been able to meet that target kind of enrollment at our small schools.”
In his address to the board, Sandpiper parent Boris Brumshtein echoed the concerns of many others about the considerable travel time to Nesbit and an even longer one to Ralston that would affect Redwood Shores families with the closure of the neighborhood’s middle school.
Not having sixth-to-eighth grades at Sandpiper forces those in Redwood Shores “to commute across the district through a congested (thoroughfare) during peak hours,” Brumshtein said. “Families will lose two hours daily for homework and activities, and students will experience increased stress and fatigue.”
A petition urging the district to preserve Sandpiper’s middle school has garnered more than 250 signatures, he added.
But the support for Sandpiper does not come at the expense of Nesbit, he said.
“Both small schools serve the geographic needs of their neighborhoods, and both show success,” Brumshtein said. Both Sandpiper and Nesbit “are valuable and deliver what they were built for.”
Sandpiper eighth-grader Christopher Yip gave the board his reasons why the district should leave his school as is.
“Firstly, we have good teachers here,” Christopher said, “and they get to know you really well due to the small class sizes. For example, my sixth-grade teachers still remember me.”
He also doesn’t need to take the bus and instead “can bike to school with my friends and have fun,” the boy said.
Board members appreciated and acknowledged the community’s thoughts and concerns.
The board realizes “how difficult this topic is. It’s deeply personal, and it affects families, students and our staff,” Trustee Shelley Tang said, addressing the crowd.
“Tonight, we heard your fears, frustrations, pride and deep care that we have for our schools and our students,” Tang added. “We’ll take everything that we’ve heard with us in our board discussions.”
After the meeting, Deguara told the Pulse that the district’s structural budget deficit of about $4.5 million is not a driving factor behind the proposed middle-school realignment.
The district plans to use reserves to close the budget gap over time, he said. But reconfiguring the middle schools could still benefit the district budget through potential savings.
Other districts are similarly contending with shrinking enrollment and ongoing budget constraints.
The Redwood City School District, for instance, is projecting that its current enrollment of about 6,400 children will fall by more than 1,000 students heading into the 2033–34 academic year.
Because of that projected drop-off and other factors, RCSD is proposing $6.3 million in cuts and savings for 2026-27. That would follow the $6.6 million in cost-savings measures RCSD has already implemented this school year.
