Hearing Set on Effects of Closing Miraleste

A public hearing will be held Dec. 7 on the environmental effects of closing Miraleste High School and other campuses on the east side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District.

The decision to conduct an environmental study was announced this week, in accordance with a judge’s ruling that a study must be done before Miraleste can be closed.

The judge’s ruling came after east side parents went to court to block the district’s plans to close the 964-student campus last spring. Meanwhile, they are pressing ahead with a petition to break away from the peninsula district and form their own school system.

Even as the district conducts the study, however, it is appealing the May ruling by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Miriam Vogel that said it is necessary. Vogel concluded that the district had a legal obligation to consider whether a series of school closures had a cumulative impact on the east side’s environment.

Michael Brandman & Associates, a Los Angeles consulting firm that has done environmental studies for the district in the past, will conduct the Dec. 7 hearing at 7 p.m. at district headquarters. Its purpose will be to take suggestions from the public on the scope and specifics of the study, said district spokeswoman Nancy Mahr.

Written proposals addressed to the consultant also will be received until 5 p.m. Dec. 21, she said, and further public hearings will be held before a final report is submitted to the school board, probably in April.

If the consultant concludes that east side school closures have not significantly affected environmental quality there, the school board presumably would be free to proceed with its plans to close Miraleste.

In that event, Miraleste’s high school students would be reassigned to the district’s remaining two secondary schools on the west side, Rolling Hills and Palos Verdes. About 200 intermediate students at Miraleste, which started a 7th-through-12th-grade configuration last year to boost enrollment, would go to Malaga Cove and Ridgecrest middle schools.

In its appeal of Vogel’s ruling, the district is arguing that state law exempts school districts from preparing environmental impact reports when they close schools, Mahr said. Other public agencies, along with private firms, are required by the California Environmental Quality Act to file the reports when a project could significantly affect the surrounding environment.

Seven peninsula schools have been closed in the last decade as the district struggled to adjust to declining enrollment--from a high of 17,800 in 1974 to 9,300 students currently.

Four of the closed schools are within the boundaries of the proposed new district, leaving the east side with Miraleste High and one elementary school, Mira Catalina. After the school board voted in November to close Miraleste, east side parents formed the East Peninsula Education Council and launched a petition drive to secede from the district.

List Being Prepared

Ted Gibbs, a council spokesman, said the well-financed parents group has hired its own consultant, Environmental Audit of Placentia, “to be sure that Michael Brandman (the district consultant) does his job correctly.”

He said the parents group will submit a long list of environmental factors for inclusion in Brandman’s report. “What’s critically important is that the report assess the cumulative effect of multischool closures on the east side,” Gibbs said.

The east side parents have argued that the loss of neighborhood schools is making their area a less desirable place to raise families. The district contends that it must consolidate its students and resources at schools in the more heavily populated central and western sections of the peninsula.

On the secession front, meanwhile, the east side group has won a delay of a state hearing on its petition to form an independent school district. The state Board of Education had been expected to take up the matter this month, but agreed to postpone it until February, Gibbs said.

More Time Desired

He said the east side group needs more time to prepare a master plan, which he said could help persuade the state board that a new district would work, financially and educationally.

Gibbs said the parents group also is preparing a detailed argument against the adverse recommendation of the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization, which concluded in July that splitting the district was not in the best interests of public education on the peninsula.

“The county decision didn’t conform with the criteria for forming a new district and we want to show that,” Gibbs said. He suggested that “politics” had entered into the decision.

Who Will Vote?

If the state board rejects the county committee’s recommendation, it is expected to call an election on the secession question. That would raise another critical question: Who will vote?

Gibbs said the vote should be limited to east side residents and possibly west side parents whose children are enrolled at Miraleste. Mahr, the district spokeswoman, said every voter affected by the issue has a legal right to participate in the decision.

“Our position is that the vote, if there is one, should be districtwide,” she said. “Certainly everyone on the peninsula would be affected if the district’s school population and property were split into two, even smaller systems.”

Another basic issue--trends in school enrollment--may be clarified when the district’s new demographer, Donald King of Rancho Cucamonga, presents his projections to the school board on Dec. 5. He replaces Frank Ferguson, who died in December.

Enrollment Forecast

Ferguson’s last projections indicated that enrollment will continue to decline for several years and then stabilize at a level under 10,000. The east side’s demographer, Nancy Bolton of Rancho Palos Verdes, said her studies indicate that enrollment will bottom out next year, then slowly but steadily rise to 15,000 by the year 2000.

Mahr said the district has spent about $200,000 in the legal battle to close Miraleste and expects to spend another $80,000 on the environmental study.

Gibbs said the east side group has spent most of the $200,000 it has received so far in donations.

THE DISPUTEHere is a chronology of events in the dispute over closing Miraleste High School:

* Nov. 2, 1987--The Palos Verdes Peninsula school board, after a series of public hearings, votes unanimously to close Miraleste High School at the end of the school year.

* Nov. 3, 1987--Rebellious parents in the Miraleste area form the East Peninsula Education Council and vow to secede from the district.

* Dec. 18, 1987--The parents group files a lawsuit aimed at blocking the district from closing Miraleste.

* March 2, 1988--The group files a secession petition with the county Committee on School District Organization.

* May 10, 1988--A judge rules that Miraleste cannot be closed until the district considers the possible cumulative environmental impact of closing Miraleste and four other schools in the area.

* June 20, 1988--The school board appeals the judge’s ruling.

* July 6, 1988--A county committee recommends against splitting the district and forwards its findings to the state Board of Education.

* Nov. 15, 1988--The school board announces that it will prepare an environmental report while continuing legal efforts to overturn the judge’s ruling.