Redondo School Consolidation Rejected

The Redondo Beach school board, maintaining a position it has held since the mid-1960s, has rejected a revived proposal to unify four beach-city school districts into one kindergarten-through-12th-grade system.

Supt. Nick Parras said the board, at a special session Tuesday night, voted unanimously not to participate in any plan that would combine the elementary school systems in Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach with the South Bay Union High School District.

Instead, Parras said, the trustees asked the staff to study the idea of establishing a unified district in Redondo Beach. If such a district were formed, it would assume the South Bay Union district’s responsibility for educating the city’s high school students.

“It’s all in a very exploratory stage,” he said. “The board is interested in knowing what might be involved in forming a city unified district.”

Ed King, business manager for the high school district, said Gov. George Deukmejian, in a recent letter, suggested that the beach cities look into unification as a solution to severe declines in enrollment during the last 15 years.

Appeal for Assistance

The governor’s letter, he said, came in response to a recent appeal by his district for more state assistance in solving South Bay Union’s financial and enrollment problems.

The number of students in the high school district, which serves the three beach cities, has fallen from a high of 7,100 in 1969 to the current level of about 3,000, forcing the district to close one of its three high schools.

“In my personal opinion, unification makes sense in terms of funding and educational programs,” King said. “Instead of four district staffs, we would have one, and the grade-school kids would have a smoother transition to the high schools.”

But, King emphasized, “it’s strictly an elementary school issue. If they’re not interested, then unification is out of the picture.”

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan Beach district said the board there has not formally acted on the proposal, but trustees have said “they are still willing to listen and want to get more information from the state.” The Hermosa Beach district, which has shrunk to a single campus and has a superintendent who serves as its only principal, reportedly has also not acted on the unification plan.

Consolidation Defeated

Parras, the Redondo Beach superintendent, said similar proposals to consolidate schools in the three beach cities into one K-12 system were voted down twice in the mid-1960s and again in 1972. Hermosa Beach voters backed the plan the first time around, but a majority vote in all three cities was needed to bring about unification.

“The state wants to reduce the number of smaller districts,” said Parras, whose district has shrunk to 4,000 students from about 10,000 in the last 15 years. “But we don’t see any trend toward unification in this area.”

He asserted that consolidation would eliminate titles but not positions in a unified system, “so there would be no great financial boon.” The desire for local control of schools also continues to be a barrier to unification, he said.