Edgewood, 3 Other Schools to Be Closed

Ending a month of emotional debate, the Board of Education has voted to close Edgewood High School, Hollencrest and Willowood intermediate schools and Cortez Elementary School.

Over the vocal protests of dozens of Edgewood students who were among about 400 people attending Thursday’s board meeting, the four-member board voted 3 to 1 to convert Edgewood into a middle school while retaining West Covina High School as the district’s only secondary school.

Despite a plea for understanding from the board, many Edgewood students criticized the decision.

“It’s stupid of them to make West Covina the high school,” said Arenda Myers, a 17-year-old Edgewood senior. “Edgewood is the overall better school.”

Like others, she noted that a special committee had recommended that the district make West Covina a middle school and retain Edgewood as the high school.

Steve Novarro, a West Covina student who is a non-voting member of the school board, admonished the crowd that the decision should not be based on emotions or school spirit.

“I’d like to remind you this isn’t a football game, but a board meeting,” Novarro said to resounding boos from Edgewood supporters.

The board agreed with Supt. Jane D. Gawronski that West Covina’s larger campus and centralized location made it the better choice.

“I think the recommendation is consistent with what we have all wanted all along, which is educational excellence,” said board President Joe Mount.

Board member Elias Martinez, who cast the only vote against closing Edgewood, argued that the board should follow the recommendation of the School Use Planning Committee.

“Why did we appoint a committee in the first place?” he asked.

Martinez added that the consolidation plan would help the district, regardless of which high school is retained. “This is not winners or losers,” he said. “We are all the winners or we are all the losers. It is up to us to decide which we are going to become.”

The schools ordered closed by the board will be shut down before September.

The board followed the recommendations of the committee and Gawronski in agreeing to close Hollencrest and Willowood intermediate schools and Cortez Elementary School.

The board deferred a decision on whether to close a second elementary school. The committee had recommended that Merced Elementary School be closed. Gawronski, however, proposed that Merced be retained, primarily because it already has more students than two elementary schools not being considered for closure.

The objections of board member William J. Brutocao and strong support for Merced also were factors in her recommendation, she said. As an alternative, she suggested that either Wescove or California elementary schools be closed.

That would allow the district to keep open a school whose students consistently rate high on educational tests, she said.

“That’s the tragedy of school closures,” Gawronski said. “You don’t close them because of test scores, you close them because of declining enrollment.”

Gawronski said she made her recommendations in an effort “to keep students going to the closest neighborhood school.”

The decision ends a month of anxiety over which schools would remain open.

On Jan. 19, the special committee had recommended closing up to five schools and changing grade configurations as part of a plan to help repay $3.3 million the district borrowed from the state to cover a 1986-87 deficit. Under the terms of the loan, the district must repay $1.5 million next year.

The committee targeted West Covina High School, Hollencrest and Willowood intermediate schools and Merced and Cortez elementary schools for closure. Committee members, representing students, parents, teachers and administrators, said the two high schools had been operating at 50% capacity and the district’s nine elementary schools and two junior high schools at about 70% capacity.

Students would get a better education if they attended schools that were fully utilized and offered broader curriculums, committee members said.

However, thousands of students, parents and teachers rallied to try to save their schools in a series of town meetings. At the first meeting, held in the West Covina High School auditorium, most of the 350 people who turned out denounced the proposal to close their school.

Parents of students at Merced also argued strongly against closing that campus.

School board members agreed to listen but said they would not be pressured into a decision that would hurt the district financially or educationally.

Gawronski had asked the board to decide on school closures by Feb. 9 so that officials would have enough time to make the necessary changes before school begins in September.

At the meeting on Feb. 9, the school board voted to close one high school and reconfigure the district’s grade levels. But it deferred a decision on which high school would be closed and deadlocked on which of the two elementary schools and two intermediate schools should be closed.

However, the board did approve the grade configurations favored by both the committee and the district administration. The district will shift in September from an intermediate-school format, with students in the seventh and eighth grades attending junior high school, to a middle-school configuration.

Under that system, kindergartners through fifth-graders will attend elementary schools, sixth- through eighth-graders will attend a middle school and ninth- through 12th-graders will attend the high school.

Brutocao objected to the recommendation for a single 2,000-student middle school, citing potential discipline and teaching problems because of the large student body. He also opposed the committee’s plan to close Merced, arguing that no rationale had been given for closing what many say is the district’s best elementary school.

In a series of votes at the Feb. 9 meeting, board members Karen Welts and Martinez supported the recommended closure of Hollencrest and Willowood intermediate schools, and Cortez and Merced elementary schools.

Brutocao, supported by Mount, said he needed more information before he could decide.

Brutocao suggested that the district consider setting up two middle schools, one at the converted high school campus and one at either Hollencrest or Willowood.

That approach, which would relocate the district office to the converted high school campus, could allay concerns about an unruly middle school student body, he said.

Gawronski estimated operating two middle schools would cost an additional $163,000 annually. She estimated that it would cost $1,6 million to move the district headquarters, which Brutocao agreed on Thursday ruled out his proposal.

However, Brutocao cast the only opposing vote when the board decided to create only one middle school.

“It is not my opinion that the single middle school is consistent with the district policy (for neighborhood schools),” Brutocao said Thursday.

Although Brutocao agreed the costs of operating two middle schools slightly favored a large middle school, he said the quality of education would suffer.

“It would be nice to have two middle schools,” Mount agreed. “But the option is not available to us.”

Board member Welts agreed, saying: “Naturally, two middle schools would be ideal, but I don’t think we can afford that luxury now.”