COSTA MESA : Special Education Students to Relocate

An estimated 70 special education students in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s Costa Mesa zone will be relocated in time for the 1992-93 school year to make room for additional students.

The school board voted earlier this month to move the students in an attempt to ease overcrowding in the zone through 1995.

According to the plan, five classes of students with severe disorders of language will move from Paularino Elementary School to Killybrooke Elementary School.

Paularino would then pick up three classes of students with learning handicaps from Sonora Elementary School.

Although the moves would result in only four fewer special education students at Paularino, two classrooms would be freed, creating space for as many as 60 mainstream students, district officials say.

Some parents praised the plan because it does not redraw attendance boundaries, as a previous proposal had. But others said they were disappointed because it will mean adding six relocatable classrooms to Killybrooke and one to College Park Elementary School.

The additional classrooms would create a crunch at those schools, parents said.

Last year, the board began looking at ways to ease overcrowding in the district, which is expected to reach capacity by the 1995-96 school year.

The decision to move students in the Costa Mesa zone followed nearly two months of heated debate between parents, administrators and board trustees.

Next month, the board will begin looking at the last of its four zones, Newport Harbor.