Parent Group May Field Candidate : Camarillo: Critics say the school board waited too long before trying to solve overcrowding at an elementary school and should have foreseen the problem because of booming growth.

A group of Camarillo parents, upset about crowded schools in the eastern part of the city, is considering running its own candidate for the Pleasant Valley school board.

Members of Concerned Parents for Neighborhood Schools say that the board waited too long before trying to solve overcrowding at Las Colinas Elementary School and that the board should have foreseen the problem because of booming growth in eastern Camarillo over the past decade.

“Our biggest problem with the board is they aren’t creative or aggressive,” said Karen York, a member of the group of about 20 parents.

To decrease enrollment at Las Colinas, the board voted last school year to convert Las Colinas Middle School to an elementary school and bus about 220 seventh- and eighth-graders across town to Monte Vista Intermediate School, starting in September.

But parents from the group said it is a stopgap measure and inadequate.

“We don’t feel the school board has addressed the problem,” York said. “They ended up doing what we felt was a Band-Aid approach, busing seventh- and eighth-grade students to the central part of the city.”

The 6,250-student district is growing at the rate of about 150 students a year, mostly in the city’s eastern section. In recent years, the district has bused students from eastern to western Camarillo schools to ease overcrowding.

Bill Lamp, principal of Las Colinas, said the school’s enrollment peaked at 1,028 students last year. The school is not considered overcrowded because it was designed to accommodate about 1,100, district officials said.

Jan McDonald, another group member, said Thursday that she had taken out papers to run for the school board but had not yet decided whether she would file for a position. The filing deadline is today.

The need for more classrooms is greatest in the city’s Mission Oaks area east of Lewis Road and in the Santa Rosa Valley, areas of the city with the most new construction, parents and school officials said.

School board members and district officials agree with parents that busing students about 40 minutes to Monte Vista is a temporary solution. But they said the district has been seeking ways for at least five years to pay for a new school.

“They’re not the only ones who are concerned,” board member Leonard Diamond said. “They have no idea in the world what’s involved being a board member, what’s involved running the district. All they know is their seventh- and eighth-graders won’t be going to school across the street.”

Diamond, an 11-year board veteran, said the board has been struggling to cope with the city’s growth.

“The problem we have is people appear in the eastern part of Camarillo. They buy lots. They start building their homes. . . . Developers and Realtors make many promises to them about the schools, and we are left holding the bag.”

District officials cited several ongoing efforts to solve the space problem.

In June, the district developed a 20-year master plan that addresses the need for new schools, said Howard M. Hamilton, assistant superintendent for administrative services. The plan recommends that three schools be built over 20 years, one of those within the next three years, Hamilton said.

Although Diamond called the plan excellent and said it met the district’s needs, York criticized it as lacking in creative ideas.

Also in June, the board reached an agreement with Pardee Construction Co. in which the developer set aside 10.5 acres, worth more than $1 million, for a new school. The land was given in lieu of developers’ fees required under state law.

The problem is finding money to build the school. The state has no money, and the Pleasant Valley Elementary School District would not qualify as being among the state’s high-growth areas, Hamilton said.

The district is considering placing a bond measure on the June, 1991, ballot to provide money for schools, Hamilton said. Other options include a special tax-assessment district, a loan “or we could have a giant bake sale,” Hamilton said.

In June, the parent group presented a petition with 633 signatures asking that the board consider a school built entirely of portable buildings to solve the problem.

But Diamond said the cost is prohibitive, and the board would prefer to see a permanent school built to resolve the space shortage.

In the November election, incumbents Robert W. Formhals, Barbara Miller and Dolores V. Rains are up for reelection.

Although Rains had taken out papers, as of Thursday Formhals was the only incumbent who had filed for reelection, county election officials said. Camarillo residents James Gamboni and Leonard J. (Len) Caligiuri had also filed.