OXNARD : Elementary Schools Face Layoffs, Cuts

The board of the Oxnard Elementary School District voted Wednesday to ease the district’s fiscal woes by giving notices of layoff, demotion or reassignment to 63 employees, including 13 reading and language specialists and three district nurses.

The district is facing a $2.75-million deficit for the 1991-92 school year because of state funding cuts, Supt. Norman R. Brekke said.

In addition to the layoffs, the board voted to eliminate the district’s music program, including choral and band instruction, change school boundaries to cut $450,000 in busing costs and close Ramona School a year earlier than planned.

The action came midway through a series of 11 meetings scheduled to allow parents to voice objections to the boundary proposal. The meetings will continue so parents can be briefed on the plan. The next meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. May 1 at Rose Avenue School.

Board President Charles Johnson said the board vote, taken after more than an hour of deliberation in closed session, was done to allow affected employees to begin looking for positions elsewhere. State law requires that layoff notices be sent by May 15.

“To start cutting programs is the toughest thing we’ve had to do,” Johnson said. “Someone, somewhere in the district will be affected. But the children will get an education.”

The district will save $1 million by changing school boundaries and by closing Ramona School. The school, which is 52 years old and in poor condition, will be replaced by Ritchen School, which is scheduled to open in August 1992. Ramona’s 668 students will be transferred to other schools until Ritchen is completed.

Juanita, Curren and Sierra Linda schools will become neighborhood schools for grades K-6 as part of a plan to change attendance boundaries for certain schools in the district. Currently, Curren and Sierra Linda serve kindergarten and grades 4 through 6; Juanita serves K-3.

The move to neighborhood schools ends 20 years of cross-town busing mandated by federal court order to integrate schools. That order was lifted in 1988 for the Oxnard School District, Brekke said.

Janis Johnson, PTA Council president representing all the schools in the district, blamed the state for the board’s early notification of pending layoffs.

“It’s rather ridiculous and wrong of the state to tell the school district that they are required to notify employees by May 15 about possible layoffs, when the district won’t get money from the state until the money is approved in July,” Johnson said. “It’s wrong and puts a terrible stress on employees.”