HUNTINGTON BEACH : Haven View School Targeted for Closure

Ocean View School District officials, who previously proposed closing Crest View School, this week recommended that Haven View School also be closed next year because of declining enrollment.

School officials have also tentatively abandoned their proposal to close Sun View School after parents mobilized against such plans.

For months, district administrators and members of a planning committee had considered Haven View and Sun View schools as leading candidates for closure, as part of the district’s reorganization of school attendance boundaries.

Crest View School, which has a disproportionally large number of ethnic minority students among its seventh- and eighth-graders, is already targeted for closure under the district’s racial desegregation plan.

The Board of Trustees is scheduled to vote June 4 on a comprehensive reconfiguration and desegregation plan. If approved, both proposals would go into effect in September, 1992.

Haven View, with a student capacity of 390, is the smallest among Ocean View’s 17 kindergarten-through-sixth-grade and kindergarten-through-eighth-grade schools. Sun View can accommodate up to 420 students.

The reconfiguration plan, proposed to make better use of the district’s resources in light of declining enrollment in recent years, will cost more than $1 million in building modifications, officials disclosed at a board study session Thursday.

The staff-recommended plan to pare down the number of schools to 15 campuses, four of which would be changed to middle schools, would cost between $1.2 million and $1.7 million for remodeling, officials estimated.

The money would mainly go toward purchasing 18 portable classrooms and six prefabricated restrooms, enabling nine schools to accommodate more students than they now can hold. The additional students would come from Crest View, Haven View and Oak View School, which is to be radically overhauled under the district’s desegregation plan.

An alternative reconfiguration plan, to close Crest View and Haven View schools but retain the district’s existing grade-level configuration, would cost between $1 million and $1.5 million in additional buildings and related costs, officials said.

The money for remodeling would come from a special $7-million reserve fund earmarked for capital improvements, Supt. Monte McMurray said.

Funds from the same account would also pay for new buses needed for the reconfiguration and integration plans. Operating costs, however, would come from the district’s general fund. District officials have not yet estimated operating costs.

McMurray, however, projects that 3,000 students--more than one-third of all the students in the district--would be bused under the new plans. Ocean View currently buses 600 students per day, he said.