Revamped School Boundary Plan Continues to Upset Parents

Despite changes to a sweeping plan to redraw school boundaries, parents told Ventura Unified School District officials Monday that they are still unhappy with the plan and with how the revisions were made.

As in previous hearings, many parents urged the district either to leave the boundaries alone or to delay changing them until further study is done.

“I’m very disappointed,” parent Jan Lewis said. She said the revised plan failed to portray accurately what parents’ concerns were and did not consider alternatives presented by parents at earlier hearings. She also said that parents were not given enough time to review the changes.

Under the proposed plan, hundreds of children attending Ventura’s public schools would transfer to new schools in September, 1992, but six elementary schools would be exempt from the sweeping boundary changes proposed for the school district, officials said Monday.

Administrators who presented the revisions to about 75 parents at a meeting at Anacapa Middle School said that Poinsettia, Elmhurst and Loma Vista elementary schools would continue drawing students from their present boundary areas.

Boundaries of Saticoy, Juanamaria and Serra elementary schools would also remain intact, pending the findings of a committee of parents, teachers and principals from those schools, who will draw up their own boundaries.

The committee would begin meeting with district officials in September, and would present a report and recommendation to the school board by January.

All the proposed changes are dependent on school board approval. The board is scheduled to discuss the revised plan at a study session tonight and at a May 14 board meeting. The district has 17 elementary schools, four middle schools and two high schools.

Since the plan was presented in January, parents have disputed district estimates of $180,000 in transportation savings if a new middle school is built.

Some parents also questioned the logic of sending some children to schools farther from home when the goal of the plan was to send children to schools closer to where they live.

Parents of Montalvo Elementary students said Monday that they are upset because their children would still have to go to Ventura High instead of to Buena High.

“The proposed plan has Montalvo students traveling 5.5 miles to Ventura High School instead of less than three miles to Buena,” parent Steve Magoon said. “We find this quite unconscionable.”

Officials originally estimated that 3,440 of the district’s 15,000 students would change schools under the plan. However, the estimated number of students affected has decreased to 2,682, administrative assistant Jean Rudolph said.

Under the revised plan, Poinsettia Elementary’s boundaries would remain the same. However, older students living north of Foothill Road would attend Anacapa Middle School rather than Balboa Middle School and Ventura High instead of Buena High.

One parent said she was angered by the apparent concession to Poinsettia parents that would leave their boundaries unchanged.

“Why did Poinsettia get what they wanted and not the people on the east side?” asked Alicia Solis, who said she spoke for parents from the Cabrillo Village and Saticoy areas. “We just ask to be left the way we are. People are very upset.”

At the high school level, students who enter the ninth grade in September, 1992, will be assigned to schools under the new plan. One grade level will be added each year so that by September, 1995, all high school students will be attending schools under the new boundaries.

Families that have one child enrolled at a high school under the current boundaries and a younger child scheduled to enroll at a different high school because of the boundary changes may transfer the older child to the younger sibling’s school.

However, the younger sibling may not transfer to the older child’s school.