State Won’t Allow Vote on Split District : Eastsiders Denied Chance to Break Up Palos Verdes Schools

Palos Verdes school board members Jeffrey Younggren and Jack Bagdasar shared a jubilant victory hug Friday after the State Board of Education announced its long-awaited decision: Voters on the east side of the school district will not be allowed to decide if they want to secede.

Moments after the board’s 6-3 vote, an elated Younggren declared that the action ends “two years of warfare” with a parents group that has sought to split the Palos Verdes Peninsula School District since 1987, when the local board proposed closing Miraleste High School.

Younggren said the district can make plans to close the school as soon as the district issues a court-ordered environmental impact report.

“I think we need to vote and go ahead,” said Younggren, president of the board. “The environmental impact report is coming soon. As soon as we have that we’ll (prepare to) close the school next fall.”

Despite Friday’s action, the bitter dispute seems far from settled as both sides gear up for new skirmishes.

“It really doesn’t bring the matter to an end,” said Ted Gibbs, a spokesman for the parents group, the East Peninsula Education Council. “It brings this portion of the matter to an end.”

Gibbs said his group could petition the state board for a new hearing once the Palos Verdes school board completes the court-ordered environmental review of the proposed Miraleste closure and past school closings throughout the district.

Gibbs said he would have preferred that the state board postpone any action until after the November election. Three former EPEC leaders are among seven candidates running for three seats.

One of those candidates, Peter Gardiner, said in an interview that the state panel’s action makes the election “that much more important.” He conceded that if he and the other two former leaders of the group who are running are perceived by voters as one-issue candidates interested primarily in keeping Miraleste open, it will be tough for them to win as a slate.

Although all three have said they would not favor splitting the district if elected, they would vote to keep Miraleste open and to shake up the district’s present management, including firing Supt. Jack Price.

East Side Voters Outnumbered

Only about 25% of the peninsula’s voters live on the east side, a factor that could work against the three candidates. Only 15% to 20% of the people residing on the peninsula have school-age children.

The Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District encompasses Rolling Hills, Rolling Hills Estates, Rancho Palos Verdes and Palos Verdes Estates. Enrollment has declined from a peak of 17,742 students to about 9,300. As a result, the district in recent years has closed seven schools and has sold six parcels of land that had been earmarked for future school construction.

The proposed eastern district would have included 1,700 students from Rolling Hills, the eastern side of Rancho Palos Verdes and a portion of Rolling Hills Estates.

According to a staff report to the state board in July, the proposed district “would not significantly disrupt the quality of education being provided to the children in either school district.”

But a majority of the state board, which had delayed action on the issue earlier this year and failed to reach a final decision in July, viewed the secession in a different light.

In an interview, board member Kenneth Peters said that if the panel had delayed the decision again, “all we would do is keep the pot boiling even more so.”

He maintained that the proposed new district could not conduct “a comprehensive program that all secondary students need.” Peters, former superintendent of the Beverly Hills schools, also said he needed to have a compelling reason to break up the existing Palos Verdes district.

Also siding with the majority was the board’s student member, Paras Mehta, a senior at Cerritos High School, who recently joined the panel. Both sides had suggested that Mehta was a swing vote on the board, but Mehta said he rejected the election petition because breaking up the district “could impact educational programs.”

Several state board members said they had received a letter from Assemblyman Gerald N. Felando (R-San Pedro) asking them to delay action until January. Felando could not be reached for comment.

Joseph D. Carrabino, a board member from Encino, said he favored putting off the vote until after the election because he didn’t want to influence the outcome.

EPEC spokesman Gibbs said he believes that, no matter what the result of the election, “we should maintain K-12 education on the east side of the hill.”

Gibbs asserted that the Palos Verdes district, by closing east side schools, has “created a de facto west side school district which in a sense isolates and ignores the rights and needs of a substantial portion of the community.”

But Younggren expressed the hope that the state board action will put a halt to “this nonsense” and allow the Palos Verdes officials to focus on the educational needs of their students.

He said after Miraleste is closed as a high school, he would support converting it into an intermediate school and community center. He said he would not support the sale of the Miraleste property.

As a result, he asserted, the east side dissidents “will have a lot of what they’re asking for. They won’t have everything, but I don’t have everything.”