“We are at capacity,” said PUSD Superintendent Jennifer Hawn at the Board of Education meeting on May 20. Hawn’s statement was meant to clarify a debate on social media about how the district was managing its interdistrict transfer (IDT) policy, specifically as it relates to the children of district teachers who have long been given priority to attend Piedmont schools.
Hawn said PUSD has not accepted any IDTs, except for Millennium High School, since March. She said the district has no space for extra classrooms as it had to add two extra TK classes after the state expanded the age range for that program. She said she had just recently appeared before the Alameda County Office of Education to ask they they reject a transfer appeal to Piedmont because of lack of space. (ACOE agreed.)
Pre-pandemic, PUSD rarely accepted interdistrict transfers. But a desire to increase diversity and address declining enrollment (a statewide trend) opened the door to more students from Oakland, Berkeley and surrounding districts starting in 2023. That effort led to a bump in enrollment in 2024.
Hawn read a statement from Board President Ruchi Medhekar who was absent from the meeting. In the statement, Medhekar acknowledged that the IDT hold included teachers. She said class sizes, an item in ongoing labor negotiations with APT, have yet to be settled. (Settling on class sizes will determine how many students the district can enroll.) The next meeting between PUSD and APT is set for May 27, according to a PUSD “update on negotiations” document.
Maintaining low class sizes is an express goal of the Board of Education, said Trustee Michael Malione.
(Although the Superintendent’s newsletters have noted since March that the district had no spots available for non-residents, as of May 26, the PUSD information page on IDTs has yet to reflect the new information.)