Miraleste Closure Foes Lose at Polls But Vow to Fight On in Court

Even though they lost decisively among voters on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, east-side school board candidates said Wednesday that they will press forward with the legal fight to keep their neighborhood high school open.

“That’s the place we have always prevailed, where there is a real sense of justice,” said Barry Hildebrand, an east-side resident who ran for one of the three open seats on the board.

“We are not going to roll over and die. Hell, no,” he added. “I think the (east-side) community is really aroused now.”

Hildebrand, along with Peter Gardiner and Marianne Kipper, campaigned as a slate, hoping to become the majority on the five-member board. The trio are former directors of an east-side parents’ group that has been fighting to overturn the present board’s decision in November, 1987, to close Miraleste High School--the only high school on the east side of the peninsula.

Despite a large voter turnout on the east side--Hildebrand said the slate estimates that 60% of the voters in the area went to the polls--incumbents Jeffrey Younggren and Marlys Kinnel handily won reelection against the slate candidates and a fourth opponent, Brigitte Schuegraf.

Brenton Goodrich, who had aligned himself with the incumbents, also easily won election, finishing third with 8,538 votes. Of the losers, Gardiner collected the most votes, 6,480, still 2,059 short of winning a seat. In the school district, 15,162 people voted, a turnout of 36%; countywide, the average voter turnout was 13.2%

“I am elated,” Younggren said late Tuesday night when the election’s outcome was evident. “Over the last couple of years, you begin to wonder where the community support is.”

Younggren was referring to the low profile of district supporters during acrimonious attacks on the board since its unanimous vote to close Miraleste because of declining enrollment districtwide. In the wake of that decision, the east-side parents’ group, the East Peninsula Educational Council, was organized.

Younggren, Kinnel and Goodrich said the election clears the way for the district to move forward and eventually close Miraleste. The three campaigned on a theme that money saved from closing Miraleste as a high school should be used to expand the curriculum at the district’s Rolling Hills and Palos Verdes Estates high school campuses.

Kinnel said she hopes that the bitterness between the present board and their east-side opponents will now dissipate and that both sides will start working together again on school issues.

“It has to be a two-way street,” Kinnel said. “We want to do it. We don’t know when they will be ready to do it.”

Kipper said the east-side candidates knew from the start that they were “outnumbered” because more voters live on the west side of the peninsula.

However, at the party in Rancho Palos Verdes on Tuesday night where the winners gathered, Younggren called the results an overwhelming vote of confidence in the present board, adding: “The community has made a clear statement that they are not going to tolerate this kind of nonsense. I think the community at large is tired of the personal attacks.”

Besides launching a drive to keep the high school open, the east-side parents’ group has also alleged that the present board and top district administrators mishandled the sale of surplus school property. The group also contends that present board members cost the district hundreds of thousands of dollars when they retroactively approved fee exemptions in 1987 to local developers.

Board members deny any wrongdoing. During the campaign, they contended that the group’s allegations stem solely from the desire to keep Miraleste open. Younggren, the board’s current president, has repeatedly accused district critics of launching a “witch hunt” that ultimately led to the resignation in early October of Jack Price, district superintendent for seven years.

Kipper and her running mates said that while they are disappointed in the election’s outcome, their spirits are buoyed by the large number of east-side residents who voted for them. The votes showed that there is widespread concern on the east side about district affairs, they said.

The trio said the parents’ group will now focus its energies on the legal challenge it has mounted to keep Miraleste open. The district, as a result of the group’s lawsuit against it, is preparing a court-ordered environmental impact report on the Miraleste closing and other closures throughout the district.