Plumas Lake Elementary School District
Plumas Lake Elementary School District is an inclusive environment which cultivates creative, curious, resourceful and inspiring learners who will make positive contributions within their local, national and global communities.
• Cobblestone Elementary (K-5) • Rio Del Oro Elementary (K-5)
• Riverside Meadows Intermediate (6-8)
Jeff Roberts, Ed.D.
Superintendent
August 2024
Dear Plumas Lake Elementary School District (PLESD) Community,
Plumas Lake is rapidly growing. Over 1600 homes have been built since 2019 and PLESD now has over 1700 students. There are currently over 275 homes actively being built in the community. We project another 75-100 Plumas Lake students will join PLESD this school year. The three PLESD schools are now reaching capacity. Cobblestone has zero available classrooms; Rio Del Oro and Riverside Meadows both are down to a couple of open rooms that can be converted from support rooms to classrooms.
After significant input gathered from the community over the last 2 years, the School Board has come down to two solutions.
Solution 1- Build a Middle School
The Board believes the best solution is to build a 4th school site, a Middle School for two reasons. First, a new school is needed for growth and second the District does not currently have an appropriate middle school facility with appropriate athletic facilities and STEAM classrooms.
To build a middle school the District will use $20 million in Builder Fees, $20 million from the State, and the three bond measures on the November Ballot, which were approved by the Board on July 30, 2024. All THREE MEASURES TOGETHER will allow the District to build a Middle School.
- Core Academic Classrooms Measure D: funds core academic classrooms, a library, and other support facilities. (MOST IMPORTANT MEASURE)
- STEAM and High School Readiness Measure E: funds enrichment classrooms such as Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Music (STEAM). This measure also funds a multipurpose room with cafeteria facilities. (SECOND MOST IMPORTANT MEASURE)
- Student Health and Physical Education Measure F: focuses on the health of our students and community by funding athletic facilities such as a gymnasium, track, sports fields, and physical education spaces.
Each Measure will approve bonds that will be repaid from property taxes. These will cost $30 per $100,000 of assessed value. The tax is based on the assessed value of your home, not the current market value. The average assessed value of a home in Plumas Lake in 2022-23 is approximately $400,000. Meaning, the average homeowner would pay approximately $120 per year, per bond.
Solution 2- Move all Three Schools to Year-Round School
PLESD started a Year-Round Task Force in May. If the bond measures do not pass in November, the Task Force will be presenting a plan in the Spring of 2025 to move all three schools to a year-round Schedule for the 2026-27 school year. The year-round schedule is only a 4-5 year solution. If PLESD continues to grow as predicted, by 2030-31 we will have over 2300 students and will need a new school at that time.
Some year-round school information:
- Four Tracks: All of the students are placed into 1 of 4 groups or tracks. At any one time, 3 tracks are in school and 1 track is on vacation. This saves space for 25% of our enrollment throughout the year. There are different versions of this system and the Task Force will be asking for input this Fall.
- Positives and Negatives; There are lots of positives and negatives about year-round School. The Task Force will be exploring them and presenting them to the community. A couple of positives include possibly reducing learning loss over the summer, less teacher/student burnout, and the ability for families to have vacation at different times of the year. One of the negatives is that each grade level class is at a different place in the curriculum throughout the year making it difficult for teachers to collaborate and to have grade level intervention groups. This also causes issues with students being with the same 20-30 classmates for all elementary school and middle school. The Task Force will also explore changing our two elementary school configurations to a TK-2 school and a 3-5 school. Therefore allowing 2 classes per grade level being on the same track. The Task Force will be gathering input throughout the fall on more positives and negatives!
- Why a Short-Term Solution: Currently we have approximately 1700 students. If we went to year- round school with this enrollment 425 students would be in each track and 1275 students would be in school at one time. If the projections are accurate (we are currently running 20 students above the projections) by 2030-31 we would have 2320 students. This means each track would have 580 students and 1740 students would be in school at the same time. Which puts us back in the same position we are in now. The district facilities would no longer be enough to support all of our students.
The Board did explore using the Builder Fee’s to place more portables on each of the existing school sites. This would help with some growth, up to 300-400 students. As more portables and students are added to each campus all of the infrastructure including the Multi-purpose rooms become too small and additional buildings would need to be built. In the end, when the campuses are full a fourth school would need to be built. Much of the $20 million in builder fees available for the new school site would be gone, the cost of building a school will significantly increase in the future, and taxpayers costs would greatly increase to fund the building of the new school.
The PLESD School Board alongside our employee organizations, The Superintendent Committee, and our parent organizations strongly believes that building a new school now is the best option and therefore placed the three measures on the ballot. A new school will be needed now or in the future. A school built in the future will cost more to build and the residents of the district will have to pay in more taxes.
I am happy to answer questions, meet with people to discuss the pros and cons, and to discuss the future of Plumas Lake. jroberts@plusd.org Thank you for the positive support of PLESD!
Sincerely,
Jeff Roberts Ed.D.
Superintendent
Plumas Lake Elementary School District