Citizens Respond to School’s Closure

EDITOR ‘ S NOTE: The following four letters refer to the Palos Verdes Peninsula school board’s decision to close the Margate Intermediate School and reassign its students to the Malaga Cove and Ridgecrest campuses next fall. Trustees adopted revised attendance boundaries last week.

My sons attended Malaga Cove, but I feel that the present school board has closed the wrong school. In the late 1960s, Malaga Cove had the lowest enrollment of the four intermediate schools, even when teen-agers seemed to be growing out of the streets and some schools were overcrowded.

Children living near Ridgecrest Intermediate had to be sent to Malaga Cove to increase its enrollment. As I recall, there were plans to close Malaga Cove soon because it was too old and expensive to maintain, although it was deemed suitable for district administrative offices.

The district even bought property on MonteMalaga Boulevard with the intention of building a new intermediate school to replace Malaga Cove. But later, when enrollment in the area began to decline, the property was sold.

Now the present school board in its wisdom has decided to close Margate, which is only 20 years old, and keep open our beautiful, albeit expensive-to-maintain, historic landmark school, Malaga Cove. I say the board’s collective logic has been blown away by the Santa Ana winds.

SALLY BLOOD

Palos Verdes Estates