Aliso Viejo Parents Sick of School Shuffle

When Susan Assad and her family moved into their new home in Glenwood Terrace three years ago, they were told a new elementary school would be built right in their development--in two to five years.

What they weren’t told, Assad said, was that in the meantime her children could be bounced to four schools. But that is one of the realities facing the rapidly expanding Capistrano Unified School District as it grapples with placing incoming students from the new planned community of Aliso Viejo.

While families like the Assads pay special taxes annually, based on what are called Mello-Roos special tax districts, to build schools in their neighborhoods, no one promised when they would be delivered. In the meantime, the students must go somewhere.

By October, according to district projections, almost 350 Aliso Viejo students are expected to be enrolled in district elementary schools in nearby Laguna Niguel, and 579 the year after that. Which means existing students must be shuffled around to accommodate them, or, worse in the opinions of many parents, must be bused to schools out of their neighborhoods.

“We’re tired of being the shock absorber for the district,” said Molly Getzlaff, the president of next year’s Crown Valley Elementary School PTA. “After four years of being disrupted, now they’re talking about disrupting our school again. It’s someone else’s turn to be flexible.”

Homeowners in Aliso Viejo and parts of Mission Viejo are paying taxes of $145 to $773 annually, depending on the size of their home, for new schools, according to a district spokesman. But those fees will pay for a new $45-million high school first, and later a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school and two or three elementary schools, said Bill Dawson, an assistant superintendent.

“The earliest we could have an elementary school in the Aliso Viejo area is 1992, and that depends on state bond issues in June and November,” Dawson said. It could also be as late as 1995 or 1996, Dawson said.

For people like the Assads, that could mean four different moves for their elementary school children. One option the board is considering is moving the Aliso Viejo children at Moulton School to Crown Valley school for two years, then to an annex of portables at Niguel Hills Junior High for three years, and then to their new school, all in the course of one elementary school career.

“The immediate issues for us are continuity and stability,” Assad said. “We have accepted the busing; we’ve been doing that for three years.”

But as long as developers can build communities before the schools, there will be no stability, say parents such as Getzlaff.

“What we have is small symptom of a much larger problem,” she said. “Why is it that the law requires developers to install things such as roads, sewers and utilities before they put in their houses but not schools? We can put a Band-Aid on this now, but it’s a much bigger problem than just what we have here.”

“That’s just the uniqueness of California law,” Dawson said. “I don’t know of any instance in the state where schools are built first. The system is not put together like that.”

Schools are not funded until 50% of the students for the school area actually live in that area, Dawson said.

In the next few weeks, the district must come up with a formula for rearranging the students for next September, a formula that will have to be adopted by a vote of the seven-member Board of Trustees next month.

“Everyone feels like they are the ones who have to carry the burden,” said Paul Haseman, a board member from Laguna Niguel. “Well, it’s true, everyone does. The turmoil created by an expanding community will continue, and there will be impacts before schools are built which always put burdens on the community. What I’m looking for is finding a plan for Aliso Viejo now so we won’t have to keep moving the kids around every year.”

In the meantime, parents from Moulton and Crown Valley schools are hoping that everyone remains civil.

“I think the worst thing that could happen is that we could make this a bitter fight between Moulton and Crown Valley,” parent Kay Payton said. “These are the people we play soccer with or play softball with. These are the people we sit with afterwards at Ballpark Pizza. I would hate to see that happen.”