Plumas Lake Elementary School District

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Why is it necessary for this big change?

PLESD has over 1700 students and is growing by 100 students per year. Classroom space is almost completely full. If Measures D, E, and F receive 55% approval than PLESD will not have to move to year-round.

When would this change take effect?

The 2026-27 school year.

If the school bonds do get passed to build a new school, when would school be built? Would year round school be needed for the solution?

Doors to the new middle school would open in August of 2027. The entire campus may not be completed but classrooms and main areas would be ready to start. The 2026-27 school year could be very crowded. This is why the District has been designing the new school and will be ready to turn in all of the needed plans/drawings to the State as soon as the bonds pass. If the bonds pass the District contracted construction team will be ready to start in the second quarter of 2025.

Would this be for both the elementary and the middle school? Would the high school still be on a regular schedule?

All of the students in PLESD would be affected. So TK-8th grade. High school students are in the Wheatland High School District and would not be on year-round school.

Why is this the only developing community having school issues when all other communities have schools built to suit needs?

Other communities have successfully passed school bonds to build new schools.

Will ELOP be available to kids while on break? The need to have my older child home while my younger child is home, is a high necessity.

To be determined. ELOP (After school daycare) may be available during breaks if funding continues through the State and the District can meet the requirements for after school care.

Would converting all 3 existing PLESD schools into TK-8 be at all beneficial to the classroom shortage issue?

This is a solution the District/community looked at when going through the community solution process in 2022 and 2023. It does not save classrooms.

If the schools are separated by TK-2 and 3-5 will they have different start times for parents with kids at both locations?

Yes, all three schools would have different start and end times.

How would federal holidays work with the track system?

Students/Staff would not be in session on federal holidays.

If kids are having personality conflicts would it be possible to switch tracks?

Possibly, on a case by case basis at the end of a school year.

I would like to see what class sizes would look like either with a projected enrollment or current.

Currently class size limits are TK-3rd grade=24 students and 4th-8th=32. The District has kept 4th-8th grade at 28 until this year. We are creeping above that in some grade levels/classes. PLESD has not had any combination classes in many years. This may need to change in the coming years. The difficult part about projecting class sizes is not knowing what grade levels new students will enter when moving to Plumas Lake. Currently almost all grade levels have 4 classes at each grade level K-5.

What if I have current custody orders that this will affect. At this point I might as well pull my child from this school district.

This would be difficult. The district won't be able to guarantee that your student would be off at the same time as a student in a different district.

You say siblings can be on the same track, but does that include if one child will be in a special education preschool at Rio and one in 5th grade at Cobblestone?

PLESD will do everything possible to keep siblings on the same track.

Is it possible for a track to have the Christmas holidays off?

Right now in the draft schedules, all tracks would have the week of Christmas off. In both the 45/15 and the 60/20 schedules one track is off around the Christmas holiday.

Would it make sense to keep the difficult kids together and have more interventions each day so the least difficult kids do not get set back or exposed to the difficult kids. Then, the difficult kids can get their needs met with more frequent interventions.

All of the research shows that it is better to have diverse groups of students in each track. This includes students who both excel and struggle academically and behavior wise.

Have you researched other school districts' track schedule? My older kids were in year round school in the Elk Grove school district and they never had to change classrooms during their school year.

Yes, some of the schools in Elk Grove use the method that 1 classroom always switches. The other classrooms stayed in the same room all year. Your children must have been lucky and were always in the same room.

Put all the info out into the community because there are a lot of lies being spread.

The information shared from the District to the community attempts to clarify false information when it comes to our attention.

1. How will teachers safely store their classroom items they purchased with their own money? 2. If teachers have to store items, will items be stored in a shed, or will they be stored in a more secure and protected building? 3. Will the District pay us to move our classrooms? 4. How will things like district training or collaboration be scheduled or handled? 5. Will seniority be considered in any of the decision making, when it comes to creating tracks? I can't say strongly enough how much I don't want to teach year round school. I believe it will break the district-wide culture and create a huge exodus of staff. Given the already growing teacher shortage in our area, I sincerely hope teacher/staff retention is a concern and that you'll be able to figure out some kind of positive step forward if the voters can't approve this very nominal bond measure. Best of luck pushing to get the voters to do the right thing for our students.

1) Most districts that have year round school purchase storage cabinets that can roll in and out of classrooms for teachers to store their personal items. 2) To be determined on where the storage cabinets would be kept when teachers are off. 3) Pay would be determined through negotiations with the teachers union. 4) Trainings and collaborations will be scheduled throughout the year when staff are being paid for the days. 5) How staff are assigned to tracks would be negotiated.