Uncertain future for Laguna’s alternative school after 2 teachers leave and program is put on hold

An alternative school at a Laguna Beach elementary campus faces an uncertain future as parents were forced to make other arrangements for their children to attend school this fall.

All but five of 35 students in the Community Learning Center at Top of the World Elementary will transition into general classrooms in September, Top of the World Principal Mike Conlon said this week.

The moves come after the Laguna Beach Unified School District board decided June 13 to suspend CLC for the 2017-18 school year.

CLC is a specialized program for first- through fourth-grade students that integrates academics with community service, character development and social awareness through activities such as hands-on projects and field trips.

Trustees cited a reluctance to hire two teachers to replace the two who announced earlier this year they would resign, Assistant Supt. Of Human Resources and Communications Leisa Winston wrote in an email.

One of the teachers finished out the school year, but the other left in February, thus the district had to bring in a temporary teacher. The teachers did not provide reasons for their resignations, Winston said.

June’s vote followed a May 9 meeting in which parents crammed into district headquarters, pleading with the board to maintain the program.

In phone interviews parents criticized the district for not mailing letters keeping them apprised of CLC’s status.

“My frustration with all of this was the decision was super rash,” said Kim Duensing, parent of an incoming second-grader. “To close a 34-year program that fast does not make any sense.”

In March, Winston said she met with Conlon and two of the center’s PTA members to discuss options to replace teachers. CLC teachers must carry valid credentials and the district oversees curriculum.

At the meeting, Conlon said he learned that state law prohibited the district from involuntarily assigning teachers to roles in an alternative school such as CLC.

The district was left with either floating the positions internally, or hiring teachers from outside the district, Conlon said.

Hiring two teachers would have cost the district $200,000 and $240,000, according to a staff report.

The district posted the positions internally for 22 days, from April 3 through 14 and again from May 17 through 26, but received no responses, Winston said.

CLC parents and TOW held an open house for parents of prospective students on May 5, four days before the board publicly discussed CLC’s status, parent Kelly Zinser said.

Zinser wondered why the district did not tell them to postpone or reschedule the open house until after the vote.

“It’s definitely unfortunate,” Conlon said of the decision to suspend CLC for one year. “The program had a lot of value for many years.”

Zinser has a daughter who will enter fourth grade this fall. Zinser’s 11-year-old son spent two years in CLC.

“I liked the emphasis on the whole child, liked the hands-on learning and liked the idea of community,” Zinser said. “It fit our values. My kids are very creative and I want that to be encouraged.”

For example, one of the projects required students to build windmills out of recycled materials as part of a lesson on renewable energy, Zinser said.

In addition to academics and projects, CLC parents lauded the school for its emphasis on community because many students progress through grade levels with the same classmates.

Several programs and classes in place at TOW came from CLC, including the garden, yoga, and emotional management, Duensing said.

“The program has evolved and reinvented itself many times,” Duensing said.

District staff said they had considered creating a task force to study how to move forward with the program but that idea was tabled when they were unable to find the necessary teachers, Winston said.

“Without volunteer teachers, there would not be a reason to develop a task force for a program with no one to teach it,” Winston said.

Enrollment at TOW is scheduled to steadily decline in the next four years, from 589 in the 2017-18 school year to 547 in 2020-21, before going up to 553 in 2021-22, according to district statistics.

Zinser said she and her husband considered Anneliese, which has three Laguna Beach campuses, but said there was no room.

Zinser confirmed Friday that her daughter will go into TOW’s main campus.

District staff will meet with teachers at each of the district’s four schools in September and gauge any interest in starting a new or CLC-type program, Winston said.

“If there is interest, there will be a significant amount of planning and outreach that will need to take place to get a program approved and in place by the following school year,” Winston added.

bryce.alderton@latimes.com

Twitter: @AldertonBryce