Oxnard Panel Suggests Dismantling of Busing Plan

An Oxnard School District committee recommended this week that trustees begin gradually to dismantle a court-ordered busing plan that has been in effect for 17 years.

In a report to the district’s trustees, the 67-member Integration Advisory Committee recommended new limits on busing at its 15 schools and the redrawing of boundaries so that many students can attend schools within walking distance of their homes by the year 2000.

The plan, which the district could begin to implement as soon as next year, would increase the proportion of students attending neighborhood schools from one-third to two-thirds. It also would reduce the maximum distance that a student travels by bus from more than 6 miles to slightly more than 4 miles, said Ardyce Driskill, assistant superintendent of business and fiscal services.

It is expected to benefit families with more than one student in the district. Currently, many of the district’s students split their grammar school years between a nearby school and a school across town to achieve integration, which means children of the same family often attend different elementary schools at the same time. The plan would phase out the use of such “paired” schools in favor of traditional K-6 schools in most cases.

It also would bring a considerable savings to the district, which spends about $900,000 a year on busing for racial integration.

“The recommendations have been well thought out and they serve the best interest of the whole school district,” Supt. Norm Brekke said.

Brekke expected no formal opposition to the plan but intends nonetheless to collect comments in public hearings at district schools in January and February. Trustees probably will not consider the plan until March, he said.

Brekke predicted that the plan would be well-received by many of the district’s parents, who have argued that forced busing has become outmoded in the district. They have contended that the city’s large Latino population is more evenly dispersed now than in 1971, when U.S. District Judge Harry Pregerson ordered the busing plan.

But he said that parents who have had to adjust to several school boundary changes in recent years to accommodate crowded schools and the delayed opening of the Christa McAuliffe School will have “legitimate concerns” about the plan, which would have the greatest impact in its first year.

In that year, more than 1,800 of the district’s 9,500 students would have to switch schools.

Meanwhile, one committee member expressed concerns about the plan.

Ted Herzberg, the district administrator for the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing in Ventura, said the plan would allow some schools to “become virtually all Latino.”

He said the plan also failed to provide remedies for uneven ethnic distribution in the district’s year-round school programs. Two of those programs, which allow for lengthy Christmas breaks, are dominated by Latino students, many of whose parents take them to Mexico for the holidays, he said.

Order Expired

The recommendations come nearly a year after the court order lapsed, leaving the school district responsible only to continue taking “reasonably feasible steps” to alleviate segregation in schools where the practice was once widespread, according to the report.

Pregerson had required that the proportion of Latinos at each school be within 15% of the proportion of Latinos in the entire district. At that time, the district was 46% Latino, although enrollment at some schools was found to be entirely Latino.

Under the committee’s plan, the district would be required to keep enrollment at each school within 20% of the district’s current Latino composition, which has jumped to 70%.

That means a school’s enrollment could be between 50% and 90% Latino and still be considered integrated, Herzberg said.