CITRUS HEIGHTS-

Walkway cracks at Sylvan Middle School may end up splitting up an elementary campus just a half mile away in Citrus Heights.

“The school is my family,” Aslan Bennefield said. She is the PTA president at Carriage Drive Elementary.

No decision has been made just yet, but Bennefield’s family and dozens of others at Carriage Drive are in “save our school” mode after Tuesday night’s board meeting in the San Juan Unified School District.

For the first time, that board openly discussed dispersing the student body at Carriage and moving in middle schoolers as one of four proposals to get kids out of structurally-compromised Sylvan.

“Five classes go in and out of here and again, this is not safe, especially when it’s raining outside,” Sylvan’s Vice Principal Tim Murphy said.

The biggest issues at 76-year-old Sylvan don’t affect learning space, but there are problems every place else.

“To fix any one area, you have to fix the whole thing – including the hallways,” Murphy said, as he described troubled open space in the sixth grade quad.

The ‘wholesale’ fix-it plan is  requirement facing campuses grandfathered in to compliance with the Americans With Disabililites Act.

“It’s going to take $18-20 million dollars worth of work just to bring it up to our standards in the district. We do get many complaints about safety issues with pavement, with other things on the campus,” said Trent Allen, district spokesman.

Aslan Bennefield says a solution  that helps one set of students – and hurts those who’ve chosen the district’s only performing and visual arts campus – isn’t a solution at all.

“It’s just devastating,” she said.

Bennefield and others will be out on campus early Thursday morning with flyers, spreading the word about possible changes at Carriage.

District leaders say this proposal is just the start of a conversation.

Parents say it’s time to fight.