HUNTINGTON BEACH : Special Session Will Study Schools Siting

School Board President Robert Mann has called a special meeting next month to examine a range of issues involving school sites, including reconfiguration of the Huntington Beach City School District’s eight school boundaries.

Mann said he and interim Supt. Gary Burgner agreed the meeting is needed to address an array of problems and to update new board members. The date has not yet been set.

Topics will include comparing enrollments with current boundaries and possible moving of portable classrooms, changing of boundaries or reorganization of elementary and middle schools.

For example, two more portable classroom buildings this month have been added to Isaac L. Sowers Middle School. If the school’s future enrollment calls for more portables, the district might want to change its boundaries to direct some of its students to nearby schools, Mann said.

Officials will also consider the prospects of establishing a school in the city’s Holly-Seacliff residential community as that massive development proceeds, and will discuss plans for a school in the tentatively planned Bolsa Chica-area development, Mann said.

Additionally, the session will address a possible alternative location for the maintenance facility now situated at the site shared by Agnes L. Smith and Ethel Dwyer schools, on Palm Avenue between 17th and 14th streets.

The maintenance and transportation facility is sandwiched near the middle of the schools’ site. Consequently, buses and maintenance equipment frequently rumble through the heart of the site during school hours.

“I swear there is no sense at all to the layout” of the Smith-Dwyer site, Burner said.