The fate of Carpinteria Family School is hanging in the balance.

Parents are worried about the school’s future after the Carpinteria Unified School District budget proposal only included funds for one teacher, leaving the school with one class and eliminating the second- and third-grade class after the kindergarten and first-grade class was eliminated last year. 

The school board will officially make a decision on grade reconfiguration on Tuesday, and district staff is recommending that the school only offers a fourth- and fifth-grade class for the 2025-26 school year.

The Family School offers multilevel classrooms, meaning the kindergarten and first-grade students were in one class together, second and third were combined, as are fourth- and fifth-graders. 

The staff report said the grade elimination is due to budget constraints, declining district enrollment, declining Family School enrollment, and increased enrollment in dual language immersion classrooms.

Cutting the classes and two instructional assistants will save the district approximately $360,000, according to the staff report.

The report proposes that second-grade students will move to the same Canalino third-grade class while third-grade students will enter the fourth- and fifth-grade class. The report also states that keeping the school open for one more year will allow incoming fifth-grade students to “promote from CFS and provide parents with ample time to make decisions about their students.”

At a June 10 school board meeting budget hearing where parents shared their concerns about the grade elimination, board member Andy Sheaffer said he had two meetings with Family School parents to hear their concerns and said that the district hasn’t made a decision regarding the fate of Family School.

“I said it was all dependent on our budget, and fortunately our budget is looking better — doesn’t mean that things are going back to normal at the Family School, but a decision has not been made,” Sheaffer said.

Parents say they chose Family School because they liked the small class sizes, focus on family engagement, and great teachers. 

Nikki Hathaway has a daughter going into fourth grade at Carpinteria Family School, and her son was in the kindergarten and first-grade class for a year and was looking forward to going back. Then they learned that the kindergarten and first-grade class was cut from the school a week before the 2024-25 school year started. 

“It was hard for him, it was a very short-notice transition,” Hathaway said. “We had just moved here that year prior, so they had already gone through a lot of change. He was excited because he knew his teacher. That was one of the reasons why we chose Family School. We wanted smaller classrooms, and we wanted that consistency of having the same teacher for two years.”

Even though Hathaway’s son was already registered at Family School, they had a week to enroll him at Canalino Elementary School before the school year started. While Family School is on the Canalino school site, it meant her kids would have to be in separate programs. 

“That was a really hard transition, right before school started, to explain what was going on to him and not knowing that teacher, not having gone into the classroom,” Hathaway said. “It just made the start of the school year really challenging.”

Then in February parents learned that the second and third grade class might not come back for the 2025-26 school year after the current teacher was retiring.

At the time parents were told it was just a possibility, but the school board never had an official discussion on the matter. However, when the board had the first reading of the 2025-26 budget on June 10, the budget only included funds for one teacher at Family School. 

“Essentially you then have no pipeline for the school,” Hathaway said. “If you dissolve a kindergarten and first-grade class and you dissolve a second- and third-grade class, you’re kind of creating an outcome of not having that program be viable anymore.”

When the district announced they were eliminating the kindergarten and first-grade class, they said it was due to low enrollment. 

During the 2023-24 school year, Family School had a total enrollment of 56 students, according to the National Center of Education Statistics.

After the kindergarten and first-grade class was cut for the 2024-25 school year, the school had 45 students and it’s expecting 23 students in the upcoming school year, according to the recent superintendent’s report. 

Jack Mohr has a daughter going into fourth grade at Family School and a son going into kindergarten at Canalino School. Mohr said his son would have gone to Family School if they still had the kindergarten and first-grade class. 

“​​It felt like the rug kind of got pulled out from under us that there wasn’t even going to be the option for parents to indicate interest,” Mohr said. “I think that’s when a lot of us really started to get concerned about what was the trajectory that the district had in mind for the school.”

Mohr said parents have been sharing their concerns at board meetings since February to get the issue on the board agenda.

“We all understand that the board members, even though they’re elected officials, they are volunteers,” Mohr said. “But it’s just been challenging without the formal public hearing process that I think a lot of us would expect out of a school that’s looking to eliminate grade levels.”

However, parents will finally get their wish on Tuesday when the school board officially discusses grade reconfiguration at Family School. District staff is recommending that the board eliminate kindergarten through third grade and only have a fourth- and fifth-grade class in order to save money, according to the staff report.

Members of the public can attend the meeting on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at Carpinteria City Hall at 5775 Carpinteria Ave. or watch a livestream on the City of Carpinteria’s Youtube channel.