Parents Angered Over Proposed Busing Target Garden Grove Trustees for Recall

In the wake of a simmering school-boundary dispute involving the proposed busing of students, a group of angry parents announced Monday that they will serve intent-to-recall papers on all five trustees of the Garden Grove Unified School District at the regular school board meeting tonight.

The recall move stems from “widespread unhappiness” among parents because of proposed school boundary changes that may involve busing, said Sharon Camunas, one of the parents. The school board is studying ways to change school boundaries and thus relieve overcrowded, predominantly Latino schools.

Camunas is among a group of Garden Grove parents, most of them Anglo, who have said they fear that the busing will hurt their neighborhood schools.

These parents said state test results show that academic achievement is lower in schools in which most of the students are still struggling to learn English. They referred to several years of California Assessment Program test scores that showed that lack of English is a handicap to higher test scores.

The school board so far has approved no new boundary changes. “I feel they (parents working for a recall) are acting hastily,” said Lynn Hamtil, school board president. “I just wish they would wait and see what happens before they initiate action.”

A plan recommended by the school district staff earlier this year was for predominantly Latino students who are now bused to three overcrowded schools in the eastern section of the school district to be bused into three less crowded, predominantly Anglo schools. In addition, one closed school would be reopened. That plan was shelved following a massive protest of parents at the school board’s Feb. 2 meeting.

At that meeting, scores of predominantly Anglo parents from the John Marshall School area protested the proposed changes. The parents charged that their largely Anglo school would be academically “slowed down” by an influx of Latino students who have difficulty with English.

As a compromise, the school board voted to create a study group composed of school personnel and a cross section of the community. The board said it would be guided by recommendations from the 15-member study group.

Recommendation by April

But the school board said that because time was running out to open a new school, it would proceed with the recommendation to reopen Carrillo School, at 15270 Bushard Ave. The board Feb. 2 thus voted to reopen Carrillo, which closed in 1980 due to declining enrollment. The board will wait for the report from the study group before it defines which students would go to Carrillo.

The new 15-member study group is expected to give its recommendations by the first week in April, according to school district Supt. Ed Dundon.

In the meantime, however, Camunas and other parents of children attending Marshall School, at 15791 Bushard Ave., said they remain convinced that the board will take some action affecting children at Marshall.

Camunas noted that the school district’s original plan called for parents within the old Carrillo attendance boundaries to send their children to Carrillo, rather than Marshall School, next year.

While the school board has not voted on who will attend Carrillo, Dundon and other district officials have said the newly opened school legally cannot have an enrollment totally of Latino students bused in from the overcrowded areas.

Dundon and Assistant Supt. Ronald Walter noted that the U. S. Supreme Court has forbidden school segregation, and they said that busing in students of one ethnic group for just one school would be creating a segregated school.

Camunas said she thinks that the school board still will end up “hurting Marshall School” when it draws new attendance boundaries by requiring part of Marshall’s current Anglo students to attend Carrillo with the bused-in Latino students.

“We have nothing against the children who will be bused in, and we want the best education and the best of everything for them,” Camunas said. “But when most of the children can’t speak or read English, you know that education is going to slow down for all the other children.”

The move the protesting parents said they will make tonight is the first in a long series of legal steps needed to recall a school board member.

After intent-to-recall papers are served on school board members and then filed with the county registrar of voters, the board members have seven days to issue a formal response. After that, recall advocates must publish their recall petition. They then would then have 160 days to gather signatures of registered voters who favor a recall, said Rosalyn Lever, Orange County assistant registrar of voters.