Make Students the Winners

Calm discussion seems to have replaced angry confrontation in a controversy over Garden Grove School District reorganization, a welcome development indeed.

Burgeoning enrollment in some parts of the district led officials last month to announce the reorganization plan, changing several elementary school boundaries and reopening a school that had been closed in 1980 because of declining enrollment.

Controversy was created when someone introduced the issue of busing. All of the emotions associated with the mandatory busing programs of the 1970s rose to the surface. Busing, however, was only an incidental element of a plan to make better use of existing schools, including John Marshall Elementary School, the focal point of the controversy.

The school district, which includes parts of seven cities in the county, has a growth problem within its Latino areas. Schools designed to hold 400 to 500 children now have enrollments of 700 to 800, and the numbers are rising, according to Ronald Walter, assistant superintendent of the district. At the same time, other areas of the district have a declining elementary enrollment.

The district’s plan would restore the former Marshall School boundaries. This would relocate about 150 Marshall students to the reopened Carrillo School next year. The schools are about one mile apart. The plan also calls for about 300 students from the overcrowded sections of the district’s Latino community to be bused to Carrillo. While the school board has approved the Carrillo School reopening, it has not yet decided which schools will be affected by the attendance-boundary changes still to be made.

Marshall School parents protested and picketed a school board meeting when first word of the proposed change came out last month. According to Rebecca Cambier, she and other parents had worked hard to build a highly rated school that has many successful supplementary programs. The issue is not the ethnic composition of the schools, she said, but that Marshall parents don’t want to separate the student body or lose the PTA-sponsored programs. Parents acknowledge, however, that Anglo students may be a minority at the reopened Carrillo School.

A climate of accommodation began with a public hearing last Tuesday. Marshall parents found they have a common interest with parents from other schools that may be affected by the proposed change. Parents, who addressed school officials in Spanish and English, wanted assurances that their children would continue to receive a quality educational program. After the meeting, in a new spirit of cooperation, the parents met, talked and exchanged telephone numbers, Cambier said.

Garden Grove school officials must now show that they are equally committed to providing the same quality of education at all schools, including Carrillo, that exists at Marshall. According to Assistant Supt. Walter, the successful Marshall programs will be replicated.

With this commitment from the district, it will be up to these parents to regroup and rebuild. The winners will be the students.