Santa Rosa City Schools took a first step Wednesday toward putting a tax measure before voters in November. While stopping short of agreeing to pay for a consultant to poll voters, the school board asked for more information on how a survey would be conducted and how to proceed with defining what the district would do with more money from a bond measure or parcel tax.

Facing $8.3 million in potential cuts in the upcoming school year, Santa Rosa City Schools officials are considering putting a tax measure before voters in November. “We are at a point of almost desperation,” school board member Tad Wakefield said. Would you pay more to fund local schools?

More than 50 parents of Doyle Park Elementary School students filled cafeteria tables Monday and listed the reasons they want the Santa Rosa school district to consider saving their small campus. Declining enrollment and test scores led Santa Rosa school board members to propose closing the kindergarten to sixth-grade school on Sonoma Avenue.

Doyle Park Elementary School has struggled with declining enrollment and has been the focus of closure discussions in the past. But now, circumstances at the school have become a ‘perfect storm,’ prompting officials once again to consider shutting the school, Superintendent Sharon Liddell says.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s hastily released state budget proposal would slash local health and human services programs while tying the fate of school funding to a proposed tax measure he wants on the November ballot. Whether the measure makes it to the ballot, and whether voters will approve it remains uncertain, leaving Sonoma County school districts again facing the prospect of building two budgets.

Santa Rosa School Board members are preparing to dust off their budget-cuts list in anticipation of potential mid-year reductions as state revenues continue to lag. It is not clear, however, whether the state will cut spending on schools. If it does, the board could axe three school days that were saved in September.

Santa Rosa City Schools moved forward with a transitional kindergarten program to be launched next fall by approving the hiring of an administrator to develop curriculum for the state-mandated program. Currently, California’s late birthday cutoff means that students well past their 6th birthday can be seated next to 4-year-olds in kindergarten.

Sonoma County’s largest school district is examining how it elects its school board members as other districts across California move to broaden their representation — and avoid litigation. Santa Rosa City Schools plans to examine whether the current way trustees are elected disenfranchises minority voters and fails to comply with the California Voting Rights Act. Currently, all seven members of Santa Rosa’s board live on the east side of Highway 101, and three of the seven live in Fountaingrove.

The school year just got a little longer for Santa Rosa City Schools students and staffers. Sonoma County’s largest school district on Wednesday night voted to add a school day the week before Christmas, while tentatively approving adding two more instructional days in March and April.

While the Close to Home opinion piece written by Mark Wardlaw (“Segregation exists in Santa Rosa schools,” Wednesday) presents some valid points about the realities of demographics and school enrollment within Santa Rosa, there are many other truths that were completely missed.