Parents Weigh New Proposal on Miraleste

A parents group fighting to keep Miraleste High School open on the east side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula faces a crucial decision next week when it responds to a compromise proposal on the fate of the campus.

Ted Gibbs, a spokesman for the East Peninsula Education Council, said leaders of the parents group are pondering the Palos Verdes Peninsula School District board’s offer to convert Miraleste to an intermediate school campus instead of closing it entirely.

But he said the group’s position on the compromise will not be disclosed until the matter is brought up at the school board meeting at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

“We do think the board’s interest in keeping Miraleste as a public school is constructive . . . and our response will be constructive, timely and courteous,” he said.

Voted for Closure

The parents group formed in late 1987 after the school board voted to close Miraleste and reassign its students to campuses on the more populous west side of the peninsula. It filed a petition to secede from the district and obtained a court injunction that blocked for at least a year the plan to shut Miraleste.

The compromise, formally offered by the school board last week as a way of “ending this expensive and destructive conflict,” carries a quid pro quo and, apparently, a deadline:

In return for preserving Miraleste, the board insists that the parents group drop a lawsuit pending against the district and call off its attempt to secede and form a separate school system.

“We are not unrealistic enough to expect a commitment from your group at this time,” said school board President Jeffrey N. Younggren in a letter to the group. “But (the board) would like to know if this proposal is viable.”

Younggren asked for the Miraleste parents’ reaction before the board’s meeting Thursday, but Gibbs downplayed any implication that his group faces a deadline.

If the board is making a “take-it-or-leave-it offer” that must be decided Thursday night, “I personally don’t think we can make such a momentous decision on such short notice” and without more detailed information, Gibbs added.

Group Needs Information

He said his group needs information on funding, staffing, programs and possible grade configurations other than the sixth-through-eighth plan used at other district intermediate schools. Another major concern, Gibbs said, is whether the east side could rely on future school boards to maintain any school at Miraleste.

District spokeswoman Nancy Mahr said the board is willing to discuss such concerns but unwilling to map out a plan in detail until the east-siders agree that the general idea is viable.

If the two sides agree Tuesday on what is viable, then presumably the trustees will instruct the district staff to work out the details. In a preliminary report last week, Supt. Jack Price estimated that the financially strapped district could save about $600,000 in operational costs by converting Miraleste to an intermediate school, about half the savings of shutting it down entirely.

Yet to be decided is exactly when the board would expect the east-side group to make a commitment to drop its lawsuit and stop trying to secede.

However, another major event coming soon in the 15-month conflict suggests that time is running out for a compromise.

On March 10, the state Board of Education is scheduled to accept or reject the Miraleste petition. If the east-side group rejects the local board’s offer and then loses the petition fight, the trustees presumably would be less disposed to compromise.

In his letter to the east-side council, Younggren restated the board’s longstanding position that closing Miraleste entirely “is in the best educational interests of the students of this whole community.”

However, Gibbs said, his group’s lawsuit against the district will give the Miraleste parents bargaining leverage in the event the secession effort fails.

No matter what happens, he said, “we want to keep the channels of communication open, and we think the school board will continue to have incentives to negotiate constructively with us.”

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge, in response to the group’s lawsuit, ruled in May that the district cannot close Miraleste until it files an environmental impact report. She said the report must take into account any cumulative effect from several school closures on the east side.

The district is appealing the judge’s ruling but is preparing an environmental report.