Costa Mesa : School Board to Act on Suggested School Closure

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s Board of Trustees will act next month on the district superintendent’s recommendation to convert Costa Mesa High School into a 7th- through 12th-grade school and close its feeder school, Davis Intermediate, by September, 1987.

Supt. John Nicoll said his recommendation was based on falling enrollment at the intermediate school and the success of a similar conversion this year at Corona del Mar High. He said it is probable that one or two elementary schools will also be closed in 1987, although specific targets for closure have not been recommended.

School board President Sherry Loofbourrow said Nicoll presented the board this week with several options to deal with the declining number of school-age children in the area surrounding Costa Mesa High and its five feeder schools.

Loofbourrow said the board will weigh public opinion before it decides the fate of Davis Intermediate in late February. A decision on the elementary schools should be reached by the end of March. “We don’t want to move so quickly that the community doesn’t have a chance to discuss it with us,” she said. “But we don’t want to take so long that the schools are left in a state of uncertainty.”

Since 1973, 16 of the district’s 40 schools have been closed due to declining enrollment, Nicoll said.