HUNTINGTON BEACH : Crest View School Could Be Closed

Five months after the Ocean View School District board postponed a proposal to close three schools, a fourth campus is now a leading candidate, according to a new district study.

The review, part of the district’s ongoing efforts to correct racial imbalances of student populations at two schools, recommends a reorganization that probably would close Crest View School after the current school year.

Although the proposal is “only a conceptual plan,” Supt. Monte McMurray said, “it’s no secret that we’re talking about it.”

The plan, which staff officials outlined for district trustees this week, would spare Lake View School from the threat of imminent closure, McMurray said. The board last June voted to delay for one year a budget-cutting proposal to close Lake View, Golden View and Haven View schools.

Those schools had been selected from among Ocean View’s 17 sites because of low enrollment. The proposed integration-based realignment, however, would sharply increase Lake View’s student population while slashing the enrollment level at nearby Crest View.

In compliance with state education regulations, the district has begun devising a plan to desegregate Oak View School. According to fall, 1989, figures, 70% of that school’s students are Latino, and an additional 16% are either Asian or black. Under proposed district criteria to identify segregated schools, sites with more than 48% or less than 8% ethnic minority students would be considered racially imbalanced.

If the board on Nov. 27 approves the criteria, the seventh- and eighth-grade student enrollment at Crest View, a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school, would also have to be desegregated, McMurray said. As of a year ago, 68% of the school’s middle-school students were minorities, he said.

The district staff study calls for all of Crest View’s middle-school students to be transferred to other schools.

If Crest View is closed, its kindergarten-through-sixth-grade students would be moved about a mile north to Lake View, where enrollment is sagging.

The district’s Integration Advisory Committee, composed of parents, teachers, administrators and others, is scheduled to discuss the staff proposal at its meeting Tuesday. The plan also calls for Oak View to serve as a magnet center for limited-English-speaking students in kindergarten through sixth grade, since it offers the district’s most comprehensive program in English as a Second Language. Newcomers to the district who need to learn English would spend at least a year at the school until they demonstrate proficiency in the language, McMurray said.