Board Reaffirms Plan to Bus Agoura Hills Pupils

After listening to two hours of complaints about its decision to change boundaries for middle school attendance, the Las Virgenes Board of Education on Tuesday reaffirmed its decision to send some Agoura Hills students to a Calabasas school.

The plan, to go into effect in the fall, calls for busing about 80 Sumac Elementary School graduates who live east of Kanan Road to A. E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas. They will attend Wright instead of Lindero Canyon Middle School in Agoura Hills.

After the board’s unanimous decision, parents gathered in the Agoura High auditorium groaned. Some promised to work to recall board members. Others said they would take up the board’s suggestion to establish a committee to find alternatives to the busing plan.

The Las Virgenes district has added nine portable classrooms to the campus shared by Lindero Canyon and Yerba Buena Elementary School. According to the district, 627 students are enrolled at Yerba Buena, 95 more than listed capacity, and 1,165 at Lindero Canyon, 147 over capacity. Parents agreed that enrollment must be cut but said busing would destroy the sense of community.

They suggested a temporary elementary school in the Agoura Hills area or reducing the number of students at Yerba Buena by pairing the school with Willow Elementary in Agoura Hills, using Willow for kindergarten through third grades and Yerba Buena for fourth and fifth grades.

But board members said the busing plan would allow them to keep school groupings of kindergarten through fifth grade, sixth grade through eighth grade and ninth grade through 12th grade.