Parents Back 2 High School Boundary Plans

After wrangling for months over school boundaries, a committee of parents voted Monday to recommend two separate plans for high school boundaries to the board of the Ventura Unified School District.

One plan, put forth by the district, would transfer students who live north of Foothill Road and in the city’s Montalvo neighborhood from Buena High School to Ventura High School.

The other proposal would allow students from the Montalvo area to continue to attend Buena High School, but would transfer students who live on the hillside above Foothill from Buena to Ventura High.

After a 23-22 vote in favor of the district plan, committee members decided to leave the final decision to the school board.

The district plan “is the most fair in terms of balancing transportation burdens on students and parents, keeping neighborhoods together to eliminate the patchwork (boundaries), satisfying racial balance, and all the other criteria needed to make a plan that would work for now and the future,” a report by the parents said.

But Steve Magoon, who wrote the Montalvo plan, said, “Obviously, not everyone is happy” with the Montalvo proposal. In a written report, Magoon said the plan simplifies district boundaries and allows more students to walk or ride bikes to school.

The committee also voted overwhelmingly to recommend new boundary changes to the school board for elementary and middle schools in the 15,000-student district. Parents recommended that the plans be implemented beginning in September, 1993.

Only 51 of the 63-member committee voted. Some committee members said they needed more information before they could vote on the high-school proposals.

District officials proposed the sweeping changes a year ago. After a series of public hearings, the parents’ committee began analyzing the plan in August.

Before Monday’s vote, the committee had been unable to reach a consensus on a single plan for new high school boundaries and had come up with two proposals in addition to the plan set forth by district administrators.

The committee’s recommendations will be presented to the school board later this month, district officials said.

Under current boundaries, students from both Montalvo and the hillside neighborhoods attend Buena High. The district’s proposed changes would instead send children from both neighborhoods to Ventura High.

The conflicting high school boundary plans illustrate a major problem the district faces in realigning boundaries: Both Ventura and Buena are west of Victoria Avenue, but much of the city’s enrollment and projected growth is in eastern Ventura, east of Victoria Avenue.

The alternative proposals to the district plan pitted parents who live in Ventura’s hillside neighborhoods against residents of the Montalvo area, which is roughly south of Telephone Road and east of Victoria Avenue.

Under one of the proposals, parents from the hillside areas lobbied to keep the boundaries as they are, allowing children from the Clearpoint, Skyline, Ondulando and Hidden Valley neighborhoods to continue at Buena High.

The hillside plan also recommended transferring students from the heavily Latino area of Saticoy from Ventura High to Buena High to maintain racial balance.

The alternative proposed by Montalvo-area parents, however, would let Montalvo students remain at Buena. But it would transfer children who live south of California 126, between Ralston Street and Telegraph Road, from Buena High to Ventura High, Magoon said.

“If only one of the two areas can be accommodated at Buena, I feel it should be Montalvo,” wrote Magoon, who is also a teacher at Buena and the parent of a Montalvo elementary student.

Magoon argued that students from the relatively affluent hillside area, who would have to travel up to five miles to Ventura High, are better able to provide their own transportation than Montalvo students, who would have to travel up to 5.8 miles to attend Ventura High.

During a series of public hearings last year, plans to redraw elementary and middle school boundaries, and particularly the possibility that Cabrillo Middle School would be closed, also raised the ire of parents.

The committee, however, was able to reach consensus on proposals for both the elementary and the middle schools.

Recommended changes for those schools, also approved by the committee Monday, included keeping Cabrillo Village students at Juanamaria elementary instead of moving them to Saticoy elementary, keeping bilingual programs at Will Rogers and Juanamaria elementary schools, and closing Oak View elementary and transferring its students to nearby Arnaz elementary.

A subcommittee of parents also recommended keeping Cabrillo Middle School open and simplifying its boundaries. The district should not count on a new school to replace Cabrillo because of the uncertainty of funding, members said.

“Most people agreed it’s not time to look at a bond for building new schools,” committee member Judee Hauer said.

Officials had recommended implementing the changes beginning in September.