Initiative Threatened : Fight Brewing to Preserve High School in Moorpark

A Moorpark citizens group has threatened to put a ballot initiative before voters that would halt school district plans to lease or sell the 69-year-old Memorial Union High School, which is scheduled to be closed in June.

The 29-acre campus, which once also served students of Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley when it opened in 1919, should be preserved rather than sold or leased for development, according to members of the Committee to Save Moorpark High School.

Committee members said they are opposed to large-scale development of the downtown site. They also say the school is worth saving because of its historic significance to the community.

On Wednesday, committee members took their case to the City Council, which will consider a request by the school district to rezone the downtown Moorpark property for residential or office use. The council agreed to discuss the issue at its next meeting on Wednesday.

Committee member Pam Castro told the council that many downtown residents do not want the land sold to developers for apartments or condominiums, saying that would increase traffic and bring congestion to the area.

Other committee members said they will decide soon whether to draft a ballot initiative and begin gathering signatures to qualify the measure for the November general election. They would have to collect the signatures of 10% of the city’s registered voters.

New School for September

But Moorpark Unified School District Superintendent Michael Slater said the district cannot afford to keep the school open. The district is completing construction of a high school across town using $15 million in state money, he said. That school will open in September.

“The district will obviously need classroom space in the future,” Slater said. “But now, with the community growing and spreading out, we have more schools than we need in the center of the city.”

The old high school campus, which has permanent classroom space for about 560 students, will not be needed after the new high school is completed and is too small to accommodate the more than 860 junior high school students now attending the Chaparral Middle School, Slater said.

“Even if it were to be used as a middle school, we would have to bus students from other parts of the district,” Slater said. “It just doesn’t make sense educationally or financially to have a school there.”

The district has not appraised the high school property and the school board has not decided how much of the land should be used for development, Slater said. If a state school bond issue fails to pass in June, he said, the board will likely be forced to sell or lease a portion of the property to pay for new schools needed in other parts of the rapidly growing district.

The district, which now has about 4,200 students in kindergarten through the 12th grade, has been growing at between 10% and 15% a year, Slater said. Most of that growth has come from new housing tracts outside the downtown area, he said.

“People have every right to be nostalgic about their alma mater, but I think the district has been more than responsive in that area,” Slater said. “We have begun identifying historical fixtures at the school and we are suggesting that the gym and auditorium be saved.”

Moorpark High was the first high school in eastern Ventura County. Before it was completed, classes were held in a small house in town, said Everett Braun, who was superintendent of the high school district between 1956 until his retirement in 1976. The high school district joined the Moorpark Unified School District in 1981.

“I think the school should be saved if at all possible,” Braun said. “I don’t know all the ramifications, but there is a need for recreational and community facilities and some of those buildings should be saved.”

Over the years, local residents donated time and labor for such improvements as concrete grandstands for the athletic field and field lights, Braun said. “Local people did a lot of hands-on work for that school,” he said.

The school’s original buildings were razed and replaced after the 1933 earthquake, Braun said. For a time after the quake, while new classrooms were being built, classes were held in tents on the playing fields, he said. Most of the newer buildings, such as the cafeteria, business and home economics classrooms, were constructed in 1956.

“Our biggest problems in those days were students bringing beer to school dances, chewing gum in class, throwing paper around,” Braun said. “You couldn’t hold hands on campus.

“Things have changed considerably.”