Perseverance Pays Off for Family in School District Fight

Francisca Bendick and her husband, Mark, got plenty of moral support and back pats when they told friends and neighbors they were challenging some powerful government institutions in a high-stakes territorial transfer fight involving four San Mateo County school districts.

And they also got a realistic assessment of their chances.

“Yeah, and good luck with that,” one neighbor, who is an attorney, told the Bendicks.

But however high the odds appeared to be stacked up against them, the Bendicks believed that state guidelines for a territorial transfer was on their side. And so they took their fight with the Belmont-Redwood Shores Elementary and Sequoia Union High school districts in a battle over which schools their children could attend to the county.

And they won.

A San Mateo County school-redistricting panel on Tuesday night voted 6-0 in favor of the Bendicks in support of their petition to redistrict about 40 homes on Fairmont Drive that sit in the Belmont Redwood Shores District.

The Bendicks’ petition likely faces other hurdles, including an election and possible appeals.

But they are savoring vindication even their staunchest allies doubted they’d ever see.

“Tedious, highly burdensome,” Mark Bendick said of the process. “But in the end it was worth the effort.”

At the center of the legal wrangling is sixth-grader Jacob Bendick, whose acceptance to Borel Middle School in San Mateo last year was rescinded after he’d already gone through orientation when the San Mateo-Foster City Elementary District learned they lived in the Belmont-Redwood Shores District – a detail the Bendicks say was unbeknownst to them when they bought their home on Fairmont eight years ago.

Jacob Bendick now attends Abbott Middle School in San Mateo as a result of memorandum of understanding between the two school districts. He wasn’t allowed to go Borel, where the vast majority of his neighbors and classmates from Highland Elementary School, where he attended, now go.

“I got a letter saying I was going to Borel and then I got another letter saying I was going to Abbot, so I was pretty mad about it,” Jacob Bendick said, noting he felt “they kind of tricked me.”

The decisive factor in the County’s Committee on School District Organization was honoring the identity of the Fairview community, spokeswoman Nancy Magee said.

She said the board “was looking to protect and respect the sense of neighborhood.”

Francisca Bendick said Jacob is happy at Abbott, noting that Principal Cathy Ennon has helped make the transition for her son easy. And although the Bendicks are no longer trying to get Jacob into Borel, they remain committed to see their territorial transfer fight through as a matter of principal.

“They still have a ways to go,” Magee said.

Unless all four districts agree to go along with the county’s decision, the Bendicks’ petition will go before voters, and/or an appeal process.

So far, only the San Mateo-Foster City district has expressed support for the petition, with Belmont-Redwood Shores and the Sequoia Union High Districts opposing it, and the San Mateo Union High School District taking a neutral stance.

And all signs point to a protracted battle.

Belmont-Redwood Shores Superintendent Emerita Orta-Camilleri told the San Mateo Times a territorial transfer would cost her district about $40,000 to $50,000 a year in property tax revenues, and that it is mulling an appeal.

Orta-Camilleri did not immediately respond to an interview request from Patch.

An appeal process would go before the state’s board of education and would likely drag on for over a year, Magee said. It would take well over a year after an election to for a territorial transfer to take effect, Magee said, noting that even under the rosiest scenario from the proponents’ standpoint, it wouldn’t be implemented until July of 2013.

And it remains unclear who would actually participate in the vote, with the election being limited to the 40 or so Fairmont homes, or much more expansive district-wide elections.

“We still have to work out who’d be involved in the election,” Magee said.