School Closure Hearings Begin in November

A long-awaited round of public hearings on the impact of a proposed school closure in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District is scheduled to begin the middle of next month, the district has announced.

The board will hear comments on an environmental impact report regarding the closing of Miraleste High School at its regular meetings Nov. 13 and Nov. 19, at 7:30 p.m. at the Rolling Hills High School gymnasium, district spokeswoman Nancy Mahr said.

Two more public forums will be held Nov. 20 and Nov. 26 at the same place and time, when the board is scheduled to discuss the report and possibly take final action.

The environmental report, compiled by Michael Brandman Associates, will be available in its final form Nov. 1 for public review. It was ordered after the trustees proposed closing Miraleste in 1987 because of declining enrollment and a parents group challenged them in court. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge, at the parents’ behest, prohibited the board from closing Miraleste until the report was complete. The board later rescinded its vote to close Miraleste, but work on the environmental report continued.

A draft copy of the report drew reams of commentary and prompted more than 30 proposals from members of the public for alternative school reorganizations, officials said. Among the proposals are plans for consolidating the district’s campuses and for changing the grade-level configurations, Mahr said.

In addition to the proposed Miraleste closure, next month’s hearings will cover the alternatives suggested during the public review period, Mahr said.

Public hearings on the report were to have been held last month and early this month, but they were postponed to give the board extra time to study written comments members had solicited from parents and others in the community.