4J superintendent proposes that Family School, Camas Ridge share campus

Presenter 4J Superintendent Dr. Miriam Mickelson initially suggested closing Family School. After listening to parents, she offered a new proposal. At the 4J school board meeting Jan. 21, Dr. Miriam Mickelson:

Dr. Miriam Mickelson First, I just want to say that any conversation about changes to schools or programs or location can bring so much uncertainty and concern for families and staff and students, and our top priority will always be the well-being and success of our students. And we approach these decisions with care. 

So with that in mind, we are sharing a proposal regarding the co-location of Family School at Camas Ridge. This means that both would operate on the same campus with separate identities, while sharing space in a way that preserves each school’s mission and student experience. 

And early in the budget process, I did consider Family School’s closure as one of the possible options for addressing our financial realities. And as we continued to engage with families and staff and community members, and as I spent more time understanding both the strengths of Family School and the available capacity spacewise within our system, I came to believe that there is a way to preserve the program while addressing still our budgetary needs. 

So that is why I am bringing a recommendation to the board of a co-location instead of closure. The co-location is what the board will be taking action on. Related actions such as the transition and leadership decisions are operational and are within my purview as superintendent and that of the staff. 

Family School is a program with 111 students approximately this year, and the program emphasizes strong relationships, student voice, and active family partnership. We also want to note that in previous school locations that Family School has experienced, they have established a very positive track record as a good neighbor, working very collaboratively with host schools and communities to ensure a smooth co-location. 

When we looked at the capacity of Camas Ridge, the school was designed to serve approximately 450 students. Current enrollment is 263 students, and projections for next year show an estimated 250 students at Camas, so there is capacity there. 

Camas is among the smaller elementary schools in our district, with five elementary schools currently enrolling fewer students than Camas, and we have a total of 19 elementary schools. And like many of those schools, Camas is a newer facility and was designed with significantly greater student capacity. 

If we colocated Camas and Family School, they will have a total of about 360 students next year, and that enrollment would still be smaller than at least 10 other elementary schools. So this makes Camas a viable site—from that perspective—for co-location without creating an oversized or overly dense campus.

Iin addition to having the physical capacity to support co-location, Camas share similar values with Family School around strong family engagement and a philosophy of learning that emphasizes collaboration, inquiry, and problem-based learning. 

While all of our schools welcome and value family engagement, the values alignment between Camas and Family School makes this co-location a particularly strong fit. 

As with any co-location, there are several key areas that we will need to very carefully analyze and address to ensure a successful and smooth and safe transition. How are shared spaces such as a cafeteria, the gym, playground, classrooms going to be managed and utilized? 

How will staffing levels and impact on class sizes be equitably distributed? Schedules for arrival, recess, lunch and dismissal—that’s also a very important consideration. Health and safety considerations of our students, as well as resource allocation and structures for fundraising or program-specific accounts. 

And in all of this, it is very important to consider the needs of our life skills students at campus. 

If the board approves the co-location, we will form a transition committee representative of both school communities as well as district leaders to ensure that we are being very deliberate and thoughtful in addressing each of these questions, and more so that the needs of both Camas Ridge and Family School are fully considered. 

I also want to share that I realized that the timeline may feel truncated, especially when we consider the conversations that we’ve had with Camas Ridge only recently. But the board is not taking action on this until Feb. 4, so I encourage families to continue to advocate for your schools and students until the board takes action on this on the fourth. 

And I want to extend my very sincere gratitude to both the Family School and Camas communities for the way you have engaged in this conversation—thoughtfully, respectfully, and with a clear commitment to students at the center. There is no perfect solution to the budget shortfall that we are facing, and I know that uncertainty can be difficult. 

And yet I feel genuinely encouraged by what I have seen and heard. The care and willingness to listen across both communities give me confidence that if the board approves this direction, the adults in these two communities will come together and figure out how to make it work for the sake of our students.

And in a world where dialogue and discourse are often fractured and where divisions can come too easily, this proposal offers something powerful. It is an opportunity for us to show our students what it looks like when adults take on hard issues with integrity by seeking common ground, honoring different perspectives, and working collaboratively toward shared solutions. 

Education is the great unifier. This proposal, while not perfect, gives us the opportunity to exemplify that truth, and I firmly believe that the strength of our schools is rooted not only in our programs, but in the way we show up during challenging moments.

Presenter Parents from Family School and Camas Ridge shared public comment.

Family School parent My name is [S]. My son started his kindergarten experience at Camas Ridge last year. It was very clear this was not the right fit for him with bullying and lack of support from the principal. I pulled him from Camas and attempted homeschooling. I quickly realized that my little buddy was too smart for his mom to teach, as he claimed to know more than me already. 

I reached out to Drew Maves, the 4J school psychologist, as he had helped transition our son to Camas, and he helped with us getting a 504 in place for him there at Camas. Drew asked if I had heard of Family School. I had not. A quick call, a tour and we were sold on Family School. 

My son has flourished and has made so many wonderful friends in all grades, kinder through fifth grade. He loves having an all-school recess to get to play ball with the older kids, and play on the play structure with the youngers. 

His reading and math skills have exploded this year, as well as so many great problem solving skills and real-world experiences at such an early age.  They just started their big project on China and that’s all he’s talking about. He can’t wait to do his at-home project on that. 

I come today in support of the idea of co-location of Family School at the Camas Ridge location. At first, my gut dropped. How will I tell my son that I want him to go back to the very place that I told him he would never have to return? 

But then I looked at him at Family School, surrounded by the best friends a boy could ask for. They have his back. They will support him. They make him feel loved and he’ll be safe. Allowing Family Schools to colocate with Camas can bring the best of two schools together. Moving our school to the beautiful Camas Ridge location, that new, beautiful school, makes so much sense. Why let six empty classrooms just sit there? Let’s fill them with students who are excited to learn. 

From my understanding, Camas used to be more similar to Family School ways with our project-based learning, focus on the arts, Monday morning music, and family involvement. Why not celebrate those things and share them with more children?  Let’s widen our community. That is what Camas Ridge and Family School are all about, community and welcoming to all. I know our staff and parents are eager to make those connections and see how together we can make great things happen. 

I would really like to thank you, Dr. Mickelson, for being so open and honest with our school. Originally you came with a message of school closure, yet then you took the time to really listen and hear our stories, both from our parents and our staff. I have not experienced another superintendent who has been so forthcoming and shared what they were planning, and then they listened. I really am in awe. I feel like we were actually heard and were ready to work to make that transition as smooth as we can. So thank you, Dr. Mickelson, for doing what is best for our Family School students. Thank you board, and I hope you will take time to consider Dr. Mickelson’s recommendation. One hundred students, their teachers and families are counting on you. Thank you. 

[M] My name is [M]. I’m a parent at Camas Ridge and a board member of the parent organization, Camas Ridge Community Organization. And I’m sharing this statement on behalf of our board of directors.

As you consider the superintendent’s upcoming recommendation of co-location, please remember that at Camas Ridge, there are 260 very real, very wonderful children and their families who will experience impacts from this decision. 

You have heard from our peers at Family School, and we want to ensure that you hear from us as well. While we enter this conversation centering the Camas values of inclusivity, love, and belonging, please note this is also a scary, new, and very fast-moving proposal that could bring change to a community who has already experienced a lot of change.

In the past six years, we’ve had four different principals and three different physical buildings. 

The wider parent community of Camas just found out about this potential co-location and leadership reset via email two weeks ago on Jan. 8. As a board, our statement is not for or against co-location, but it does address some key important topics for our community that have been brought up in this potential change. If you are considering a ‘Yes’ vote for co-location, we look to you, the board, and to our district staff to set us up for success. 

Four key items we urge you to consider:

#1. To support equitable resources, policies and practices between both schools. Matching classroom sizes, proportionate distribution of shared building funding and staff resources between the two schools, and to consider within budget realities what, if any, extra resources are needed for short-term support during a potential transition. 

#2. Camas is also home to a strong life skills program for students with specialized needs that need to be carefully considered and accommodated for. 

#3. If leadership transition is inevitable, our schools will require an experienced leader who excels in complex building operations, transparent collaborative communication, and compassionate behavior management. We also have a large number of Spanish-speaking families here at Camas, so ideally, our core leadership team would have staff bilingual in Spanish with strong cultural competency. 

#4. Our parents have shared a wide variety of opinions on what would be the best outcome for our students, and especially given the short timeline we’ve known about this, we’ve let our parents know to reach out. So please take pause. Read all the emails in your board email and consider all these points of view before you make your final vote. Thank you very much.

Presenter Board Member Morgan Munro:

Morgan Munro The questions under analysis for the Family School and the Camas Ridge co-location are really, really big questions. And so are there some either guiding values or processes or pieces that you see really guiding that work and those experiences? Every single one of those could go wrong very easily.

Presenter 4J Elementary Level Director Jeff Johnson:

Jeff Johnson  Very good question… and should this be something that is approved at that Feb. 4 meeting, it’s really important that we start with each of those individual schools, around: What are the core values that are really important to maintain, and what is key and non-negotiable about the school to maintain? 

And really working with schools separately, coming together, really, with representative staff that really represent the teachers, the classified, the parents, and enabling some student voice in there as well, to come together to really start to look at how decisions will be made moving forward with a transition team, really looking at agreements of how this transition team of the two schools would work together. 

And then really starting to take a look at some of those questions that that come up here around shared space, classrooms, locations, whether or not we stagger schedules, or engage in the same level of scheduling. 

So it’s a definite process and a process that would continue through the start of the school year in terms of, ‘Okay, we’ve made these decisions, this is how we’re going to operate. And is it going the way that we intended that it would go?’ and that we would continue to engage in decisions moving forward from there.

Guest Presenter Director Melissa Ibarra:

Melissa Ibarra I would just add that communication is going to play such a vital part if this is the direction that we move, in order to be sure that all of our stakeholder groups are informed about the process along the way, and about some key decisions that we are considering with the committee and additional opportunities for input as well.

Presenter Dr. Miriam Mickelson:

Dr. Miriam Mickelson On the topic of leadership, if the two schools were to colocate, my very strong inclination right now is to have a leadership reset, because that helps ensure that neither school’s existing culture or practice or priorities are seen as being favored, and it helps build trust and a sense of fairness from the outset, which I think are critical to having a successful co-location. 

And I understand that that causes quite a bit of angst to both the Family School and the Camas Ridge Community School. I recognize that. Please continue to advocate and ask questions and we will listen and consider all of the different perspectives and insights and voices as it pertains to this particular topic. But I want to acknowledge that we have very dedicated leaders at both schools, and if the path forward is that we have a leadership reset, it really is to help the co-location work for both schools.

Speaker Superintendent Mickelson recommends that 4J adopt co-location as a way to save money and preserve beloved programs. The school board is scheduled to consider a decision Feb. 4.