District Overview 2025-26

An Overview of Our Schools

SCOE serves as an intermediary between the California Department of Education in Sacramento and Sonoma County’s 39 public school districts, plus its charter schools. Each district is governed by three to seven elected school board trustees. These trustees provide community leadership as advocates for children, their district, and public schools. They ensure the schools they oversee are responsive to local values, beliefs, and priorities. Trustees hire and evaluate their district’s superintendent, who serves as chief executive officer of their district and is responsible for day-to-day operations. Trustees also adopt policies, approve Local Control and Accountability Plans, adopt and monitor budgets, and track their districts’ performance and student achievement.

District Unifications

Sonoma County has the fifth-most school districts of any county in California. In recent years, school boards and community groups have commissioned SCOE to finance studies that evaluate mergers of some districts. One study examined unifying Santa Rosa City Schools’ high school district and its nine feeder elementary districts. Another set of studies in west Sonoma County examined unifying the West Sonoma County Union High School District with its feeder elementary districts or creating two unified districts within the footprint of the current high school district. These studies were informational, and though there continues to be continued community discussion about the potential benefits of merging school districts, there is currently no active petition to move forward with the scenarios outlined in the studies. In the event of any unifications, an entirely new district would be created, with a newly elected board of trustees. To learn more about school district unifications or consolidations, visit scoe.org/unifications.