June 3, 2004

Dear Parents and Guardians;

I am writing to inform you of an impending decision that our Board of Education must make in the next few weeks that may have a significant impact on your family calendar. The District took Cambridge Elementary multi-track year round in anticipation of certain growth in the surrounding community. This growth was to have materialized over two years ago, but is just now beginning to occur. Many of you have observed the homes being built off of Leisure Town Road. These homes will provide new students to Cambridge.

We did not, however, anticipate the reduction of students on Travis Air Force Base, making more room available for any "overflow" from Cambridge, nor the decreased enrollment at Cambridge from the established part of the community (your neighborhoods). Given these two changes, it is possible for us to take Cambridge single track year round. If you will recall, we told many of you when we went multi-track that the only thing we were saving on was facility costs of having to build or secure more classrooms. In fact, multi-track was more expensive in every other way.

The concept of YRE is a solid one. In fact, research has proven that the single track, year-round school schedule is the most beneficial one for children. For this reason, and for the ease of exchanging students between Cambridge and Foxboro elementary schools, the proposal is to start Cambridge for the 04-05 school year on a single track, year round schedule. The track closest to the traditional school calendar is Red Track, so we are proposing to move Cambridge to this schedule.

By converting to this student schedule, we estimate our savings to be a little more than $100,000 per year. These savings will help us avoid eliminating some of the extra programs our children enjoy (music and sports). Since it is a sound educational decision to provide single track year round education and a favorable economic one as well, it makes little sense to continue this multi-tracking in a time of fiscal challenge for our district.

We do not make this recommendation lightly since we know it will inconvenience many families. Some of you may have vacations planned for September. If this is the case, we will work with you on an individual basis so your plans for this year will not be disrupted. We know that vacations and family time are important and alternatives such as independent study will be offered if necessary.

Some of you may have grown accustomed to another track, and it may be an inconvenience to have to change schools. If this is the case, you might seek an intra-school agreement to attend Foxboro on your particular track. While we cannot guarantee they will have room, you certainly may enter your child’s name on a list for future openings.

The Board will be discussing and possibly acting upon this recommendation as early as June 8^th at its regularly scheduled meeting. I wanted to alert you to this so you have an opportunity to voice your opinion. If you wish to comment but cannot attend this meeting on short notice, please email any of the Board members or me at the addresses listed below and we will include your comments in our discussion. I suggest email because they may be read at the meeting. Of course, you may choose to simply call any Board member.

The members are as follows:

We regret any inconvenience this may cause you should the Board act upon our recommendation and make the change. We are doing this, however, to save programs while keeping our commitment to educational excellence.

Sincerely,

Jacki Cottingim, PhD.

Superintendent