San Bruno B.A.R.T.

  The Crestmoor Elementary community is pushing for the school to become a campus serving kindergartners to eighth-graders.

  Currently, Crestmoor serves about 240 children in kindergarten to sixth grade. But a "K-8 school has been the desire of Crestmoor School's dedicated and supportive community for many years," Principal Natalie Sheridan said Friday in an e-mail. "I'm excited by the prospect of this dream to be realized in the (hopefully) near future."

  Sheridan also made her case during a recent San Bruno Park School District board meeting, saying that a K-8 school offers long-term educational support, opportunities for student leadership and other benefits.

  The board is expected to study the issue further next month.

  "The school has made a good case for itself," said board President William "Skip" Henderson Jr. "But we still have a lot of questions to ask."

  Those questions include the effect on other district schools and financial repercussions, Henderson said. He added that the district should also study reconfiguration at its other schools.

  "We got to do it for the whole district," he said, "so that way we're not serving just one school."

  Crestmoor could convert to a K-8 school in 2009 if the board does approve of such a plan, Trustee Russ Hanley said.

  In Sheridan's proposal to the board, the school would go from a K-6 to K-7 campus in the first year of reconfiguration. The following year, the school would convert fully to K-8.

  "Families are more invested in a K-8 school as their child attends longer," Sheridan said, "and they are more likely to have siblings on the same campus."

  Going K-8 would also allow teachers to develop instructional continuity with students, she said. "Teachers feel a strong sense of accountability for each child as they invest themselves in a nine-year relationship with each student."

  The K-8 setting also provides opportunities in which older students can learn to mentor and collaborate with the younger ones, Sheridan said.

  "Receiving nine years of education on one campus would eliminate a difficult transition between school levels," she also said.

  Giving families in the district another education choice will help raise enrollment, Sheridan added. Otherwise, "parents are choosing to either leave the district for a different model or stay within San Bruno to attend private K through eighth-grade schools."

  The district's enrollment stands at 2,625 students this school year - down from the nearly 3,000 in 2000-01, according to the state Department of Education.

E-mail Neil Gonzales at ngonzales@bayareanewsgroup.com