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WALNUT CREEK — It has been viewed by some as a form of modern-day economic and racial discrimination in public K-12 education, while others say it’s a way to gain more accountability, oversight and local control of their schools.

No matter how you look at it, a local school district secession movement afoot in the eastern boundary of Walnut Creek is dividing loyalties and communities. A group consisting of families who live in the affluent Northgate High attendance area has gathered more than 6,000 signatures in its quest to detach from the large Mt. Diablo Unified School District, which includes ethnically and economically diverse areas from much of Contra Costa County. The group, which calls itself Northgate CAPS, says its mission is to build a smaller school district more attuned to students’ needs.

“Our goal is to create a smaller district that is more aware of, and responsive to, the needs of our educators and our students; a district that is less bureaucratic, more collaborative,” said Jim Mills, one of the group’s founders.

The Northgate community is not alone. This local separatist movement is emblematic of a national trend that has arisen in Birmingham, Alabama; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; as well as in Malibu and Santa Monica, where areas with higher incomes and test scores are seeking to declare their independence.

Similar movements have been attempted and failed in the Bay Area in the past 20 years. Hercules and Pinole sought exits from West Contra Costa Unified, and Foster City tried to break off from San Mateo-Foster City Elementary school district, said Michael Kirst, who is president of the state education board. Either they failed to achieve the necessary backing, as in the case of Hercules, which in 2005 failed to win the county’s support to join the John Swett school district, or they were unsuccessful in clearing the high hurdles that the state sets to redraw district boundaries.

“The education code is not a friend for anyone that wants to investigate the policy of changing the boundaries of a school district,” said Susan Pricco, the chief petitioner for the Hercules secession effort from 2003 to 2005. “The intent was the boundaries would never be changed, which is a terrible thing because it doesn’t take into account how populations move, change and experience growth.”

Northgate CAPS wants to take five schools out of Mt. Diablo Unified, the largest school district in Contra Costa County and, with 56 schools, among the largest in the state, Mills said. The district’s approximately 32,000 students live in cities and communities stretching over 150 square miles from high-end Lafayette and Walnut Creek to the blue and white collar suburbs of Clayton, Concord, Pleasant Hill and Martinez. The district serves a large Latino population in Concord, Bay Point, Clyde and Pacheco.

By contrast, the new Northgate Unified would serve about 4,200 students in Bancroft, Valle Verde and Walnut Acres elementary schools, Foothill Middle School and Northgate High School. Those schools are located in higher-income areas of eastern Walnut Creek and the Lime Ridge, Crystyl Ranch and Crossing neighborhoods of Concord. Overall, the area’s median household income is about $126,000, according to a 2015 U.S. Census Bureau analysis, whereas Mt. Diablo’s overall median household income was $76,144.

Walnut Creek has a 30-plus-year history of trying to disentangle itself from the Mt. Diablo school district. In the mid-1970s, a group of residents tried to form one K-12 school district for the entirety of the city of Walnut Creek. That effort failed to get county and state approval, and the group lost an appeal in the state courts, said Gwen Regalia, a former Walnut Creek mayor who served on a committee that launched that effort. Another attempt in 2008 to have the Northgate community annexed into the Walnut Creek K-8 school district and Acalanes high school district also foundered.

But Northgate CAPS members say it is time to try again. Mt. Diablo’s record of bureaucratic dysfunction, lack of transparency and weak fiscal management has led to a lack of trust among the voting public, Mills said. Although district supporters say that has changed in the past few years under a new superintendent, the secession group believes it is still impossible to gain support for a district-wide parcel tax to boost classroom programs the Northgate community wants, he said.

Further inflaming the secession effort is the Mt. Diablo board’s recent votes to expand Northgate High School’s attendance area to allow entry by Pine Hollow and Diablo View middle schoolers, said Alisa MacCormac, one of the group’s founding members. Those middle school students would have gone to Clayton Valley High School before that campus converted to a charter school.

The county and state boards of education would have to approve the proposal, which the group plans to submit in February, before bringing it to voters throughout the entire Mt. Diablo school district, said Contra Costa County Office of Education spokesman Terry Koehne.

According to state education code, the county and state must consider nine criteria in making their decision, including whether secession would enhance segregation or create a significant financial burden for the affected district, said Kirst.

The Mt. Diablo board has no formal say in the approval process for secession, said Lawrence Schoenke, the district’s outside counsel, at a recent school board meeting. But he cautioned that the split could lead to an inequitable division of property because the Northgate area’s tax base is proportionately higher. And it could also create a substantial racial divide, he added.

Mt. Diablo is 36 percent Latino and 41 percent white. After a split, those racial groups would be evenly represented at 39 percent, according to a district report, while the new Northgate district would be 65 percent white and 8 percent Latino. Mt. Diablo’s percentage of English-language learners would increase from 40 percent to 43 percent, compared with 23 percent of the new district’s student population.

“That’s going to be a red flag, both at the county and the state,” Schoenke said.

The rhetoric against the movement also has been heating up in recent weeks. District Superintendent Nellie Meyer said the district would not support a split, and accused the secession’s supporters of peddling inaccurate and “misleading” information. She said Northgate families could lose well-established programs in special education, performing arts, sports medicine and engineering, which would be relocated to other Mt. Diablo schools. The district’s teachers union has also come out against the secession after winning salary increases of more than 8 percent last month.

Northgate High teacher Jeff Hagerstrand, who lives in the Northgate community and has four kids who attend the schools there, is among the teachers opposed to a divorce.

“We’re the whitest and most affluent school in the district, and so the whitest, richest school should not be building a wall between our neighborhoods and less affluent neighborhoods and more diverse neighborhoods,” he said. “And I’m worried about the message this would send to kids.”

MacCormac said there is a misconception that because some Walnut Creek residents pay higher taxes, the money will be lost to the Mt. Diablo district. But districts with higher numbers of low-income students are actually getting more money than well-off schools under the state’s new funding formula, she said.

But Sean Reardon, a professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford University, says research shows that even with extra funding for poorer school districts, academic performance could suffer from a split. That’s because mixed-income schools are able to attract and retain skilled and experienced teachers and offer challenging curricula and instruction. Parents at diverse schools often have the resources to lobby for their students, he said.

Frank Adamson, senior policy and research analyst at the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, said such a secession would only intensify the growing gap between the haves and have-nots.

“It would further enshrine inequity within the system and life outcomes for those students,” he said.