Simi Board Drops Reduced Plan for Middle Schools

The Simi Valley Board of Education has indefinitely postponed a plan to create middle schools and four-year high schools after rejecting a minimum-cost plan by the school district’s staff as proposing too little money to be effective.

The board adopted the middle-school plan in concept Tuesday, saying it was better for youngsters than the district’s existing junior high school system.

But after an emotional three-hour hearing attended by more than 200 parents and teachers, the board voted 4 to 1 to delay implementation until the district can afford more guidance counselors and teachers.

“The proposal brought to us is not palatable to me. I can’t support it,” said board President Helen Beebe, expressing the concerns of the board’s majority and of many parents and teachers who spoke during the hearing.

Board member Diane Collins also said it was not the time for the district to undertake such an ambitious plan because it faces a budget deficit next year of as much as $8 million, or about 10% of its $75-million spending plan. The anticipated shortfall, which Supt. John Duncan attributed to salary increases negotiated with teachers, will be discussed at a continued board meeting tonight.

Member Lew Roth cast the dissenting vote, saying he was disappointed in the plan’s uncertainty and had hoped it would begin at least next year if not this fall, as proposed.

The Simi Valley Unified School District, which serves about 17,000 students, has long considered replacing its four junior high schools, which have the seventh through ninth grades, with middle schools including the sixth through eighth grades, and expanding its two high schools to include ninth grade, school officials said.

The district is among a dwindling number statewide with three-year high schools and junior highs. The state Department of Education has been promoting the switch to middle schools since a 1987 report found that sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders perform better in schools that address the emotional needs of their age, and that ninth-graders have more academic and extracurricular opportunities on a high school campus.

A national trend to middle schools was already under way. According to state records, there are 803 middle schools statewide, compared to 163 junior high schools.

Last year, the board tabled an $880,000 plan because it was too expensive, and instructed Duncan and his staff to reduce proposed costs. On Tuesday, however, the board balked at a scaled-down $454,000 plan, largely because it limited each middle school to one guidance counselor and eliminated one of the two assistant principals previously proposed for each school.

The board also objected to the proposed elimination of department heads and teacher training in the middle schools, saying both were necessary for a smooth transition.

The board told Duncan it would accept no less than a principal and two guidance counselors in each middle school, plus the addition of two instructors in each middle school, plus restoration of funds for department heads and teacher training--revisions that could increase the cost to the level of the plan rejected a year ago.

Despite a grim financial outlook for school districts statewide, Duncan said Wednesday that he was confident the plan would take effect within the next four years, especially if the district’s elementary school enrollment continues to swell and it becomes necessary to reopen a closed school.

He said the cost of reopening a closed elementary school and that of the board’s middle-school proposal were similar, about $290,000 in annual operating costs. Middle schools would ease crowding in elementary schools because they would remove sixth-graders.

Duncan said the city’s high schools are currently underutilized because of the city’s demographics, so the addition of ninth-graders would not cause severe overcrowding.