Beach Cities’ Schools Feel the Pinch : Education: The desire for local control is strong. But Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach could use the cost savings that some form of consolidation would entail.

When Lynne Gonzales sent her oldest boy off to his first day of school in Hermosa Beach, there were half a dozen schools in the little city. There was no high school--there never had been--but there were shop and homemaking electives, two aides in every classroom, and even an enthusiastic if sometimes off-key school band.

But times changed. In the ensuing 20 years, school budgets shrank drastically. Not only Hermosa Beach, but Redondo Beach and Manhattan Beach as well felt the pinch, lost children, shut down schools.

By the time Gonzales’ youngest hit eighth grade in the mid-1980s, there were 758 students in a district that two decades before had had 2,141. Shop class, home economics and ceramics were gone, as were most of the aides. The music program had been scaled back. Five schools had closed, leaving a single campus where every child in the city was to be educated, from kindergarten through eighth grade.

Now Gonzales, a Hermosa Beach school trustee, is seeing enrollment creep upward, the result of shifting demographics and the district’s solid academic reputation. But the gradual rebound has come too late to do much but add urgency to the questions facing not only her district, but all the beach city schools:

How small is too small? For the sake of efficiency and education, should the three beach cities vote to merge their schools? And if so, how? Into one big district? Two? And what would be the consequences for students?

The questions are emotionally and politically complicated, particularly in Hermosa Beach. Of the three beach cities it is the smallest and least populous, with the most to gain--and the most to lose--if a merger were to occur.

Politically, the history of the beach city schools can be summed up in two words: local control.

There are, and have been for years, four school districts for the three cities. Each city has its own elementary and middle schools, and they feed into the South Bay Union High School District, which encompasses Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, plus an alternative school and an adult school.

The districts are fairly small and close together, and were urged to consolidate by state education officials twice in the mid-1960s and again in 1972. The push then was part of a statewide strategy to encourage cost-effectiveness among hundreds of small districts, said Department of Education spokesman William L. Rukeyser.

But the pull to control their own schools was stronger in the beach cities than the push from the state, and by the time the state stopped promoting unification in the mid-1980s, Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach still had separate districts.

To outsiders such resistance may be perplexing: The three cities--whose population is mostly white, economically upscale--seem so similar that, elsewhere in Los Angeles County, people regularly get them mixed up.

But to each other, the three cities are as singular and unique as three seashells on the shore.

“There’s a sense of parochialism, damn near nationalism, really, at the local level here. We’re feudal,” said Lance Widman, a Hermosa Beach activist who teaches political science at El Camino College.

“Hermosa is viewed as the kid that never quite grew up. Redondo is the kid that won’t stop growing. And Manhattan feels they’re above all mere mortals. It’s kind of a status thing.”

Over the last two decades, however, that outlook has grown costly. A state Supreme Court decision in the early 1970s took control of school funding away from local governments and gave it to the state, which then found itself financially strapped with the passage of tax-slashing Proposition 13.

Also, the state doles out money to local school districts based on the number of children the district serves, and in the beach cities that meant further belt tightening as skyrocketing home prices discouraged young families from moving in.

Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, mergers were discussed with varying degrees of seriousness as a means of cutting the cost of maintaining four school systems. But none of the plans got off the ground because one or more of the cities always would balk at relinquishing local control.

Two years ago, the issue of consolidation arose again, this time at the behest of the financially troubled high school district. In an effort to shore up its finances, the high school officials again proposed that the beach city schools merge into a single, unified, kindergarten-through-12th-grade system.

In addition to the economic advantages of maintaining one district, there are educational arguments for unification. Educators say children tend to learn best in a school system that runs seamlessly from kindergarten through high school, building knowledge, year upon year, without being disrupted by changing school philosophies or rules. In the beach cities, however, elementary students have one set of books, tests and rules through eighth grade, and a completely different one for high school.

“We try to align with the high schools,” Gonzales said, “but it’s difficult. Things that are expected in one district aren’t always expected in another. (Entering the high school district) is like moving to another state.”

But unification is a long and bureaucratic process, and can take years unless all the school districts unite behind a single plan. And this time, as before, longstanding differences among the cities stood in the way of the high school’s plan.

The Redondo Beach trustees suggested that instead of one unified district, there should be two. They feared only one high school would be needed in a consolidated district and that Redondo Union would be the one to get the ax.

The high school district, they proposed, should be dismantled. Redondo Beach should take one school and create a K-12 district of its own. And the other mainstream high school, Mira Costa in Manhattan Beach, should be the centerpiece of the second district, which would encompass the elementary schools in the other two cities.

The high school trustees weren’t wild about the idea, but they eventually agreed to back any plan on which the elementary boards could agree. A consultant also recommended the Redondo Beach plan, noting, among other things, that Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach have a common approach to curricula and testing.

And Manhattan Beach’s trustees lined up behind the plan, saying it would offer their students a single, K-12 system large enough to allow a broad range of programs and economies of scale, but small enough that students and parents would not feel intimidated or be lost in a crowd.

But for a host of reasons, the Hermosa Beach board refused to go along with the two-district idea.

Hermosa board President Mary Lou Weiss contended a single large district would streamline costs and “give us more clout in Sacramento.” Trustee Joe Mark argued that a single district was the only cost-effective way to reorganize in the long haul, and that a two-district plan just put off the inevitable.

But in the other cities, and even among some parents in Hermosa Beach, the decision was viewed as a stall and an attempt to maintain local control. Hermosa trustees fear that under a two-system merger, its interests would lose out to Manhattan Beach, a bigger city, with more voters, more students and more resources.

The two districts have speculated that a merged district would have a five-member school board with two representatives from each city and a fifth elected at large, but opponents of the joint-district idea fear that Manhattan Beach, with its larger electorate, would always dominate the board.

Hermosa trustees “know the other districts will never go for total unification. This is just a stall,” said Redondo Beach board President Bart Swanson.

But Pete Tucker, a Hermosa Beach parent and Little League coach, approved of the board’s position. “If we go with Manhattan,” he said, “. . . they’ll steamroller right over us.”

Not everyone in the little city, however, agrees with the trustees’ push for a single beach-city system. There are, after all, some advantages to going two-district now.

For instance, Redondo Beach elementary schools use different books and a different method of evaluation than the elementary schools in the other two cities. Under a single district, the books and testing methods would have to be made uniform, disrupting the education of grade-schoolers in one or more of the cities.

Under the two-district plan, the disruption would come only at the high school level, at an age when students might be better-equipped to handle it, according to Barbara J. Dunsmoor, president of the Manhattan Beach board.

Another advantage of the two-district plan, proponents say, is that of all the merger plans, it is the most politically feasible.

“While (the) Hermosa (board) has sat around wondering what people want, the lines have been drawn in the sand. They should show a little vision and say, ‘We could build a real strong K-12 system with Manhattan,’ ” said Carol Reznichek, a former Hermosa Beach board member and a parent in the district.

“But what’s happening is the opposite. The taxpayers should be incensed, because all that money going to administration is dollars away from kids,” Reznichek added. “Maybe the ballot should say, ‘Do you want to pay for four school districts, or would you rather have (the trustees) put down their politics?’ ”

City Councilman and ex-Mayor Roger Creighton, who grew up in the Hermosa Beach schools, agrees that feelings are mixed in the city, which has operated its own schools since 1904.

“Part of the people here are so disgusted with the educational system in Hermosa Beach that they would vote for any kind of change,” Creighton said.

“There’s another segment of about the same size that feels unification with Manhattan would be the way to go because Mira Costa doesn’t have the gang problems Redondo Union has, and because the elementary systems (in Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach) are pretty close.

“And then there’s another portion that feels we should salvage our neighborhood schools at all cost, no matter how expensive.”

Could Hermosa Beach preserve its neighborhood schools?

Probably not--or at least not for much longer, says school board President Weiss.

It is a growing district, its campus is filled to capacity and its limited resources are sorely stretched.

As state appropriations have become leaner, Hermosa Beach has suffered along with districts throughout the state, Weiss said. Meanwhile, after so many years of declining enrollment, the district has recently seen its student body grow by about 5% a year, thanks to a local baby boomlet, as well as the district’s reputation for small class size and innovative teachers.

Other districts have sold or leased vacant school property to shore up their budgets, but Hermosa Beach has been limited in what it can do with its defunct schools because of a 1986 voter mandate designating such land as open space.

Consequently, Weiss said, Hermosa Beach has been left in a pinch: Even if the district were to reopen an old school to accommodate its growth, it couldn’t afford the extra teachers.

“When our consultant looked at unification (this year), he said that at our current rate of spending, we had five years left,” Weiss said. “We tightened our belt and managed to balance our budget, but staying within it means cutting frills.”

Cutting frills, she said, has meant turning more and more often to the community and parents for financial help. This year, for example, the Parent-Teacher Organization has been asked whether it would be willing to kick in some of the $18,000 the district has spent each year to send the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders on their annual field trips to Wrightwood, Catalina Island and Sacramento, respectively.

“We’re seeing a trend of being asked to supply more and more of the meat as opposed to the icing on the cake,” PTO President Cathy McCurdy said.

Cutting frills has also meant piling more and more responsibility onto the district’s small administrative staff.

School counselor Arlene Howell, for example, not only advises individual students and the student council, but is also the district’s special projects coordinator.

What that means, she said, is that she not only counsels academically and emotionally troubled students and their parents, and monitors others deemed to be “at risk,” but that she also administers the avalanche of paperwork that accompanies all the state-mandated “categorical” programs in the district, including substance abuse education, programs for students with limited English proficiency and special education programs.

Angela Jones, the school business manager, does “everything from the grunt work to federal reports. . . . I am my own secretary and staff,” she said, adding that she often wonders who would do the payroll if she were ill.

“You could say, well we’re a small district and there aren’t many kids,” Howell said. “But at a point, the jobs don’t diminish. I’m often here until 6 at night, and I’m not the last one to leave.”

There’s little evidence at the school that resources are stretched thin. The classrooms, because of a teachers’ contract, are limited to 30 pupils. The texts are up-to-date. The playgrounds are ample. The building is sound. The children seem cheerful and secure.

“I think we do a great job, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best we can do for our kids,” said Supt. Shalee Cunningham, who herself handles at least three jobs.

“We need a K-12 system. We need resources: money, people, programs. We have no clout at the state level. The county is squeezing us dry. We can’t afford to be this small.”

Unification, Cunningham says, is “an inevitability.”

But that inevitability may be slow to arrive. If the trustees cannot agree, then by law, any reorganization plan they hope to put to a referendum must be accompanied by petitions bearing the signatures of 25% of the registered voters in each of the cities involved.

Redondo Beach trustees have gathered about two-thirds of the 10,000 signatures they need to advance the two-district plan. Those who back the plan in Manhattan Beach would need about 5,500 signatures in their city.

Hermosa Beach trustees would need to gather about 18,500 signatures to advance its competing plan for a single system. There is also talk of putting both measures on a local ballot at the same time and allowing the voters to choose, but state and county education officials say such a preferential ballot--instead of a referendum--has never been tried and may not be legal.

Meanwhile, each of the trustees is hoping for the consensus that will help shore up the beach city schools.

“Our kids are not being exposed to things like art and ceramics and homemaking, and they should be, at an early age, when their minds are open,” Gonzales said.

“I know kids could benefit from these things,” she added. “I know because we had them in the past.”

UNIFICATION AT A GLANCE

THE ISSUE

Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach each have their own elementary school district. When children in the three cities reach ninth grade, they move on to the separately run South Bay Union High School District.

The high school district, however, has had financial problems, and the single K-8 school in Hermosa Beach is overcrowded. All four districts agree reorganization is necessary, but they cannot agree on how to do it.

THE OPTIONS

Redondo Beach and Manhattan Beach favor split unification, in which two K-12 school systems would be created, one in each of those cities, and the high school district would be dismantled. Redondo Beach would take over Redondo Union High School; Manhattan Beach would merge with Hermosa Beach and they would take over Mira Costa High School, which is in Manhattan Beach.

Hermosa Beach wants total unification, in which all four districts would merge along the boundaries of the high school district to create one 10,000-student, unified district.

South Bay Union High School trustees initially wanted total unification, but have since agreed to support any plan the elementary boards can agree on.

THE ARGUMENTS

Split Unification

PRO: Split unification would protect local control for at least two of the districts while saving money through economies of scale. Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach already share a common approach to testing and educational programs. All students--but especially those in resource-poor Hermosa Beach--could take advantage of a broader range of electives.

CON: Hermosa Beach is much smaller than Manhattan Beach and could lose some political clout on a joint school board. The breakup of the high school district would create some disruption of curricula at the high school level. Some also argue that split unification would be a stopgap measure on the way to inevitable total unification.

Total Unification

PRO: Total unification would allow efficient operation and the broadest educational options. A larger district might also mean more influence at the state level.

CON: Once again, the larger cities might dominate a joint school board. The new district also would have to reconcile differences between Redondo Beach’s testing and educational philosophy and that of Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach, creating some disruption in curricula at the grade school level.