Hermosa Beach Board Tentatively OKs Plan for School Unification : Education: Trustees wanted to keep their one-school district. But a straw vote indicates they are now willing to merge with Manhattan Beach.

Hermosa Beach school trustees, who have held out for months against a plan to reorganize the beach cities’ schools, said Wednesday that they have abandoned hopes of holding onto their little one-school district and are willing to merge with Manhattan Beach.

In a non-binding straw vote, four of the five Hermosa Beach City School District trustees said that, as a first choice, they would like Hermosa Valley School to join a single consolidated district that covers the three beach cities.

As a second choice, the trustees said they would be willing to join Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach trustees in backing the so-called “split unification” plan, which would create two unified districts, one for Redondo Beach and one for Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach.

Formal action on the unification issue isn’t scheduled until the school board’s Oct. 10 meeting, when the votes could change. Trustee Joe Mark abstained from the vote Wednesday.

But if the board members uphold their straw vote, voters in the beach cities will be asked, perhaps as soon as 1992, to dissolve the Hermosa Beach and South Bay Union high school districts and reorganize into two new kindergarten-through-12th-grade school systems.

Currently, each city has its own grade-school district, while the high school district encompasses the three cities.

“We just came to the realization that we have to act now,” Trustee Greg Kelsey said. “We’ll lose leverage if the others unify without us, and we’d like to go ahead in a cooperative fashion.”

Added trustee Lynne Gonzales: “We need the added resources and classes we’ll be able to offer (under a merged Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach district). We wouldn’t have to send or special education kids out to other districts for their classes. We wouldn’t have to contract out for speech (therapy). In a larger district, you just can get more resources, because with more students you can get more money.”

For more than a year, reorganization has been discussed as a way to improve efficiency. Each of the four districts has closed schools in recent years because of declining enrollment.

But until recently, school officials have been divided on how to reorganize.

The high school district, which encompasses Redondo Union, Mira Costa and Pacific Shores schools, initially favored a single consolidated district. But after a consultant recommended the two-district approach in May, the high school trustees vowed to support any plan the elementary school districts could agree on.

Redondo Beach trustees, meanwhile, want to merge their elementary schools with Redondo Union High School. For the last year, they have circulated petitions to begin their own, independent unification process. Manhattan Beach also supports the two-district idea.

But when the four districts met this summer in a joint session on unification, consensus was postponed at the request of the Hermosa Beach trustees.

Wary of losing local control of their school, the trustees and several parents said they feared that they would be swallowed up if their district joined the much larger Manhattan Beach system.

Parents who wanted to maintain the Hermosa Beach district said they would rather see the city raise taxes to continue funding its own school system or enact a parcel tax that would assess property owners a fee earmarked for education.

These and other funding sources, they suggested, would cover the cost of maintaining Hermosa Beach’s kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school and paying tuition for Hermosa Beach students who would have to be bused to high schools in other districts.

But support for a parcel tax failed to materialize. And by Wednesday, when the board was to decide whether to put an advisory question about unification to the voters at a special election, the trustees had lost the will to delay matters any longer.

“We’re ready to move on, and we need a decision,” board President Mary Lou Weiss said. “The straw vote was to get an idea where we stand.”

Only Mark was unwilling to reveal his position Wednesday, saying he preferred to have board members publicly outline their reasons for supporting unification at the Oct. 10 meeting.

The trustees cautioned that their support for split unification is not unconditional. They plan to discuss it at length Oct. 10.

For example, Weiss said, the board will want assurances that Hermosa Beach will be fairly represented on any new Hermosa-Manhattan school board.

Another concern is maintaining a high enrollment at Manhattan Beach’s Mira Costa High School, because much school funding is based on enrollment. About 500 North Redondo Beach students who attend Mira Costa would go to the larger Redondo Union High School in their city.

Nonetheless, Manhattan Beach trustee Barbara Dunsmoor said she was not surprised by the outcome of the tentative vote in Hermosa Beach.

“They had to respond to their community,” Dunsmoor said, “but I think we all knew down deep in our souls that split unification is the way to go.”