Costa Mesa : School District Seeks Crowding Solutions

Faced with overcrowding, Newport-Mesa Unified School District administrators will recommend ways to adjust campus enrollments at a board meeting Tuesday.

District officials, who met with parents Thursday to discuss options, would not disclose their recommendations but said they want to increase the capacity at current schools while disrupting as few families as possible.

School officials said they foresee steady enrollment growth and limited capacity in each of the district’s four zones.

In the Costa Mesa zone, all four elementary schools are expected to be at or near capacity by the 1995-96 school year. The high school is also expected to be near capacity by then.

The board reopened three schools in the Corona del Mar and Estancia zones last year, and is scheduled to study the Newport Harbor zone in the fall.

The only options available in the Costa Mesa zone are reopening Presidio Elementary, a kindergarten-to-6th-grade school, or adding mobile classrooms to other K-6 campuses.

Thursday, parents and administrators who sit on the Costa Mesa Zone Articulation Committee discussed the drawbacks to both options.

“We are worried that opening Presidio is going to disrupt a number of students,” said Dale Woolley, the district’s student services director. “We’re concerned at this point that we might disrupt more youngsters than if we added capacity at one or two schools.”

Of the four K-6 schools, only Killybrooke can handle more students, Woolley said.

“You don’t want to overtax the core facilities--service facilities, cafeteria, medical facilities--at the site,” he said.

Woolley and Deputy Supt. Carol Berg, who sit on the committee, said their recommendation to the board will be finalized Monday and presented Tuesday.

Although the board does not plan to vote on the recommendation until March 12, the administrators said they want to allow time for discussion and citizen reaction.

“We make the recommendation early in the process so we can get people’s attention,” Woolley said.

The advisory group’s next meeting is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Feb. 6 at Costa Mesa High School.