Vista Board Defeats Elementary School Integration Plan : Education: Pressure from parents results in 3-2 defeat of staff proposal to cut minority population of Santa Fe/California school. Instead, board directs staff to redraw district boundaries.

The Vista Unified School Board, under intense pressure from parents, rejected a staff proposal Thursday night that would have reduced the student racial imbalance in the district.

In a 3-2 vote the board abandoned a proposal that would have combined the yet-to-be-built Mission Meadows School with Santa Fe/California Elementary School in an effort to lower the density of ethnic minority students at Santa Fe/California, which stands at 72%.

The board instead directed the staff to redraw the boundaries of the entire district, including Mission Meadows and the proposed Breeze Hills School, to integrate schools by July, 1992.

Ethnic minority students compose 40% of the elementary students in the district, but most schools on the edges of the district have significantly lower densities of ethnic minority students than those in the middle of Vista, such as Santa Fe/California.

The board’s action puts Vista in the middle of a national debate over the value of an integrated setting for education and whether or not schools should promote integration as a positive social value.

The proposal rejected by the board would have had Mission Meadows serving third-, fourth- and fifth-graders, while Santa Fe/California would handle kindergarten students and first- and second-graders. Mission Meadows is expected to be completed by July.

“I don’t believe in splitting schools,” board president Lance Vollmer said. “It’s difficult for kids to change schools that frequently.”

But dissenting board members saw it as a lost opportunity.

“I looked at the potential of what could be, and I saw an extended day kindergarten program, I saw programs that could help the students that come into school that are behind and those that are ahead, and I just thought that there was so many creative things we could have done with this,” said board member Linda Rhoades.

Rhoades said redrawing the entire school district for integration purposes would “disrupt the entire district” and result in the busing of more children, one of the primary complaints of parents who opposed the original proposal.

More than 350 parents showed up at two previous board meetings to voice their concerns over the proposal, but only 150 attended Wednesday night’s meeting, assistant Supt. Bill Loftus said.

Loftus said redrawing the district to achieve racial balance is feasible but will require busing students who now walk to school.