MOORPARK : Parents Petition to End School-Hopping

A group of Moorpark parents has begun circulating petitions calling for school officials to put most elementary school students in neighborhood schools.

The group, called Parents for Better Schools, had collected 180 signatures by the end of last week, organizer Helen Taylor said. The group hopes to collect at least 1,200, she said.

The petitions represent the latest move in the group’s drive to reduce the number of Moorpark students in kindergarten through fifth grade who are bused to schools outside their neighborhoods.

More than 30 parents attended a meeting last week with Moorpark Unified School District board members Tom Baldwin and Gregory J. Barker. The group plans to meet again Feb. 26 with board members Pam Castro and Sam Nainoa, Taylor said.

One of the group’s major concerns is that it is difficult for young children to change schools before the sixth grade, Taylor said. None of Moorpark’s five elementary schools houses all five primary grades, including kindergarten.

Although most students go to their neighborhood school for kindergarten through second grade, all have to change schools by fourth grade.

The district follows this plan to achieve a racial balance at the schools that roughly mirrors the 3-to-1 ratio of whites to minorities in the city, school board member Clint Harper said.

Taylor said the district could maintain racial integration and establish schools for kindergarten through fifth grade by redrawing school boundaries or establishing a magnet school in the primarily Latino downtown neighborhood.

But Harper said both proposals would lessen the racial balance in the schools.