Petition Drive Planned to Unify Schools in Redondo : Proposal May Dissolve the High School District

Efforts to establish a unified school district for elementary and high school students in Redondo Beach will move into the first official stage of the process this week when volunteers begin circulating a petition in the community.

Redondo Beach Supt. Nick Parras said petitions will be delivered at a board meeting Tuesday night to a 16-member campaign committee headed by Marlene Staich and Frank Bostrom. He said the committee will divide up the city, probably by council districts, and start a door-to-door drive to gather at least 8,275 signatures, or 25% of the city’s registered voters, which is the minimum number needed to qualify the petition.

‘Ready to Go’

“The committee is excited about this challenge and ready to go,” he said. “There is no deadline for completing the drive, but the feeling now is that we will have more than enough signatures by Nov. 30.”

Parras said the committee will work under the acronym SUN, for School Unification Now.

If enough signatures are gathered, the petition will be submitted to the county Committee on School District Organization. The agency would then review the plan to merge a portion of the South Bay Union High School District with the 10 elementary campuses in the Redondo Beach City School District to create a new kindergarten-through-12th-grade system.

After holding public hearings on the proposal, the county committee would forward the petition with its recommendation to the state Board of Education, which makes the final determination on whether to reject such petitions or call for an election in the communities affected by the proposal.

The high school district now serves students in Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach. If the Redondo Beach plan is successful, the high school district would be dissolved, with Redondo Beach absorbing its local high school campus, Redondo Union.

The new K-12 system would have about 5,500 students, including about 3,900 at the grade-school level, Redondo Beach officials said.

Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach would be left with the high school district’s other campus, Mira Costa in Manhattan Beach, and could form their own unified system for students within their city boundaries.

Walter Hale, superintendent of the high school district, noted last week that his board opposes Redondo Beach’s “split-unification” plan but will not actively oppose its petition drive.

If the drive succeeds, he added, the high school district may argue against the Redondo Beach plan at later public hearings, if a proposed study by a consultant indicates that the plan “is not in the best educational interests of students in all three cities.”

In past statements, the high school board has supported a unification plan that would bring all four districts together in one 10,000-student, K-12 system. After Redondo Beach decided to go it alone last spring, the other three districts continued on the path of seeking more information before reaching their decisions on unification.

Peter Schiff, a Manhattan Beach school official, said several consulting firms will be asked to bid on the proposed study next week. He said the study should be completed by the first of the year.

Parras said major reasons for forming a unified district along city boundary lines include maintaining local control, better continuity in courses from the lower to higher grades and more economic stability. Redondo Beach trustees have said local schools are in good shape financially and might lose that advantage by merging with other districts.

Parras recalled that three attempts at total unification, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, were turned down by voters. “The message was that most people (in the beach cities) don’t want a big merger,” he said. “So my board feels it’s time to offer another alternative.”

Supporters of total unification contend that a larger district could operate more efficiently and provide a broader range of programs.