Student Busing Plan Ruffles Some Anglo Parents in District

A plan to bus about 550 predominantly Latino students from their overcrowded schools to other campuses in the sprawling Garden Grove Unified School District has sparked a controversy, with some Anglo parents charging that their children would suffer academically.

Scores of parents from one of two schools that would be affected by the busing plan announced Monday that they will attend a school board meeting tonight to argue against the proposal. The district board of trustees has scheduled debate and a possible decision.

Not ‘Being Prejudiced’

“We don’t think we’re being prejudiced because we already have many ethnics in our school, but with so many non-English-speaking students coming into our school, there’s the situation that many of our kids will be held back” academically, said Sharon Camunas, a mother of two students at Marshall Elementary in Westminster, where enrollment is predominantly white.

Besides busing some of the students to Marshall and a Fountain Valley school, the proposal calls for reopening Carrillo Elementary School in Westminster, which was closed several years ago because of declining enrollment, district officials said. Because Marshall and Carrillo are near one another, the district is also proposing to shift some of Marshall’s students to Carrillo.

Camunas and some other parents charged that district officials gave little notice about the busing plan and have been insensitive to parental concerns. District administrators, however, said they have done the best they could to inform and involve affected parents.

The proposed busing, which is totally within the Garden Grove Unified School District, would affect schools in Westminster, Fountain Valley and western Santa Ana, as well as Garden Grove, district officials said.

Santa Ana Unified School District, which takes in most of Santa Ana, has for more than 10 years been overcrowded because of heavy immigration. That school district, with an enrollment of about 38,000, is building 22 more schools to handle the new arrivals.

By contrast, Garden Grove Unified has been declining in enrollment since 1968, when it had about 54,000 students. The district, which now has about 36,000 students, has closed 12 schools since 1968. Garden Grove Unified is still declining slightly every year, with only those schools in the western Santa Ana area showing any increase in students in recent years. Because of the district’s overall decline in enrollment, the district is not eligible for state construction funds.

Garden Grove Unified Supt. Ed Dundon said the aim of the proposed busing is not integration but rather to relieve overcrowding in those schools in western Santa Ana, where hundreds of mostly Latino immigrants have moved in recent years.

“The overcrowding is in the area of the school district near the Santa Ana River,” Dundon said. “The schools in that area have been so crowded that we’ve already been busing there for years, but now the schools nearby where they’ve been bused are also overcrowded. So we are proposing to reopen Carrillo Elementary, a school that we had to close several years ago and also shift some students from . . . Marshall Elementary.”

Russell Elementary

The busing proposal also would affect the overcrowded Russell Elementary School, at 600 S. Jackson St. in Santa Ana. Some of Russell’s students would be bused to Northcutt Elementary School at 11303 Sandstone Ave., Fountain Valley.

In an interview Monday, Garden Grove Unified Assistant Supt. Ronald Walter gave the following explanation of the busing plan:

- The predominantly Latino schoolchildren in the overcrowded area of the school district now are being bused to Rosita, Heritage and Morningside elementary schools, all of which are fairly close to the impacted neighborhoods in western Santa Ana.

- With increased numbers of students coming into the neighborhoods surrounding Rosita, Heritage and Morningside, those schools have become overcrowded. District officials now propose to divert all 495 students now being bused to those three schools to Carrillo and Marshall schools, a few miles farther west.

- Carrillo, which closed in 1980 due to low enrollment, would again get back its old attendance district, and 149 students who now attend Marshall Elementary, as well as 309 mostly Latino children from western Santa Ana.

- Marshall School would return to its old 1980 boundaries, which accounts for 243 of the school’s current 392 students. Under the new plan, the 243 predominantly Anglo students within the Marshall district would be joined by 186 mostly Latino students from the west Santa Ana area.

- Russell Elementary School in Santa Ana would have its overcrowding eased by having the attendance district roughly cut in half. About 90 mostly Latino children in the southern half of the Russell district would be bused to predominantly Anglo Northcutt School in Fountain Valley.

Protests have come mainly from Marshall School parents, who say the school is very good academically. They have charged that an influx of limited-English-speaking students will slow academic progress at the school.

Assistant Supt. Walter responded: “There will be a definite increase in limited-English-speaking students in Marshall School. But there are educational aids, such as special bilingual teachers and teacher aides, that the school will now be eligible for.”

Protesting parents have also repeatedly asked why the school district does not bus all the Latino students to just one school, the reopened Carrillo School.

But Supt. Dundon said to do that would, in effect, be creating a segregated school--something expressly forbidden by the Supreme Court.

“We could not move all those children and put them in one school,” Walter said. “We could not (legally) defend that kind of action.”

Linda Cahn, one of the protesting parents from Marshall School, said Monday that parents in that area “are most unhappy. . . . It’s not like we don’t want these (Latino) kids here. We have many Spanish-speaking and Vietnamese children already in the school and there is no problem. But if you take half the school away and replace those students with limited-English-speaking students, you know the school is going to suffer.”

Cahn added, “We understand the district has been working on this (busing plan) for a very long time, but we parents only got notice about it this week. The notice was very nebulous.”

She also charged that Garden Grove Unified School District officials, in a meeting last week with her and other concerned parents, showed “a quite nasty attitude.”

Dundon disagreed. “We tried to be responsive and forthcoming, and I don’t think we were ever rude. But we didn’t back down,” he said. “Maybe the parents are upset because I wouldn’t back down on the proposal I’m bringing to the school board.”

The Garden Grove Unified school board will meet at 7:30 tonight at Fitz Intermediate School, 4600 W. McFadden Ave. in Santa Ana. The proposed busing and school boundary changes are the main items to be discussed.