Beach City Schools Set Reorganization Proposal Deadline

The boards of education from Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and the South Bay Union High School District have set a Friday deadline for accepting consultants’ proposals to study reorganization of four South Bay school districts.

The selection of a consultant would be the first step toward the possible unification or reorganization of the separate public school systems that educate 9,800 youngsters in the South Bay’s beach cities. Currently there are four districts covering the beach cities, including the Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach elementary districts and the South Bay Union High School district.

The Redondo Beach City School District has already begun a separate effort to form its own unified district and will not join in hiring and paying for the consultant. However, Redondo Beach school officials have agreed to provide statistical information for the study.

The study would look at a wide range of options, including combining the four districts into one, leaving the systems as they are or realigning them in some way.

In a detailed proposal for prospective consultants, the boards said the study they seek would be “the primary informational resource from which future district reorganization decisions will be made.”

Environmental Report

The consultant’s study should include personnel, facility and housing needs, a financial analysis, potential changes in educational programs, and an environmental report for each of several unification options under consideration.

“This will be but one of our resources in analyzing the issue,” said Hermosa Beach Supt. Shalee Cunningham.

The consultant will be selected by the Beach Cities Ad Hoc Committee for District Reorganization, composed of the superintendents and two board members from each participating district. The final report is due Jan. 3, the proposal said.

The report did not list a cost for the proposal, but Noel Palm, president of the South Bay Union High School District board of trustees, estimated that it could cost between $15,000 and $30,000.

The districts held an informational session Monday to answer consultants’ questions about the proposal, but no one showed up, Cunningham said. Rather than indicating a lack of interest, that may indicate that the 13-page proposal clearly answered all questions, Cunningham said.

Four consulting organizations have requested applications, a Manhattan Beach district employee said.

Last week, Redondo Beach officials and parents, working under the acronym SUN (School Unification Now), launched their petition drive to gather at least 8,275 signatures, or 25% of the city’s registered voters, in support of creating a new kindergarten-through-12th-grade system in their city.

Form Own District

If Redondo Beach is successful in its attempts to form its own district, the South Bay Union District would effectively be dissolved. Redondo Union High School would become part of the Redondo Beach school system, leaving Mira Costa as the only school in the high school district.

Pat Cakebread, SUN precinct coordinator, said that the group received the petitions last week and that five district leaders began distributing them to workers, who will go door-to-door to collect signatures. The group has also raised $500 in a garage sale fund-raiser to help cover costs, she said.

“I think (Redondo Beach’s unification) is the best thing for all the kids in the district,” Cakebread said. “We’re going to do it all on our own, raising our own money, and not take away from the kids.”

Leaders of some parents’ groups in the beach cities said a key concern is the effect a three-city unification would have on the quality of education in all the cities and especially at the high school level. But, because no decisions have been made, some said, they are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

‘Sitting Tight’

“I have a feeling Manhattan Beach (officials) are kind of sitting tight and looking into all angles,” said Susan Lewis, president of the PTA at the Pennekamp Elementary School in Manhattan Beach. Because the issue is likely to take several months to be resolved, parents too are withholding judgment.

“I think (earlier this year) parents were pretty hot and heavy, and when things kind of cooled down, they just cooled down,” Lewis said.

As of September, 1989, the Hermosa Beach City School District had an enrollment of 715 students, the Manhattan Beach district had 2,256 students and Redondo Beach had an enrollment of 3,820. The South Bay Union High School District enrollment is 3,011 students.

Hermosa Beach has one kindergarten-to-eighth-grade school. Redondo Beach has seven kindergarten-to-sixth-grade schools, one kindergarten-to-eighth-grade school and two seventh- and eighth-grade junior high schools. Manhattan Beach has four kindergarten-to-sixth-grade schools and one intermediate school, covering seventh and eighth grades.

According to the districts’ proposal, three major organizational options are available, including keeping the systems as they are, with three existing elementary school feeder districts and the South Bay Union High School District.

A second option would be to consolidate the four existing districts into one district, the report said.

Under a third option, the so-called “split-district organization,” several variations would be considered, the proposal said, including creating two new districts divided along city lines in Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach.

High School of Choice

Each would absorb the portion of the high school within its boundaries, with Redondo Union High School becoming part of the Redondo district and Mira Costa going to Manhattan Beach. Students in Hermosa Beach Unified would have the option, under special legislation, to attend the high school of their choice.

Another version of split district organization includes grouping the Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach districts with Mira Costa High School, or grouping Redondo Beach and Hermosa Beach with Redondo Union High School, the report said.

In a letter issued last week by the South Bay Union High School District, board President Palm said the board remains opposed to the unification efforts by Redondo Beach school officials.

Palm said those efforts would separate the two high schools, disrupt attendance patterns and have a negative impact on personnel, fiscal and other resources.

But proponents argue that a single K-12 system with one school board and one staff would be more efficient and could provide a broader educational program.