HUNTINGTON BEACH : District Planning to Reorganize Facilities

Huntington Beach City School District officials have begun planning a reorganization of district facilities, which may result in changes at some schools and the reopening of one or more closed school sites.

An extensive study of district schools and other facilities is underway and will be presented in May to the Board of Trustees. The district Master Plan study will also address concerns about future enrollment changes.

Trustees are expected to make long-term facility plans later this year, and initial projects could get underway by the end of the year, Supt. Duane Dishno said.

The most pressing need, according to Dishno, is what to do about the site that houses Smith Elementary School and Dwyer Middle School. That 22.8-acre site on Palm Avenue between 17th and 14th streets also houses the district’s maintenance, operations and bus facilities, which are mixed in among the school buildings.

The district would like to eliminate the mix of uses. The facilities Master Plan will propose a variety of alternatives, all of which would be costly, according to a preliminary report. Additionally, the study will propose possible new locations for either Smith or Dwyer.

District officials for years have discussed moving one of the two schools. Officials at both Smith and Dwyer complain that the two schools overlap each other, and as a result, neither has a strong community identity.

Additionally, a 60-year-old abandoned building on the site needs to be demolished. The building, which formerly was a cafeteria and later served as the district central offices, does not meet state earthquake standards. “I worry about the liability of the district,” Dishno said. “(The building) really needs to come down.”

The Master Plan study will also propose long-term, future school configuration plans to prepare for expected enrollment increases.

After more than a decade of declining enrollment, the trend has reversed in the last two years. Enrollment in the 5,700-student district has been increasing by about 2% a year and that growth pattern is expected to continue, Dishno said.

Those statistics do not include new students expected from the massive Holly-Seacliff and Bolsa Chica housing developments. A new elementary school is being built in the Holly-Seacliff area, but middle-school students and some of the elementary school students will have to go elsewhere.

Four of the district’s six elementary schools, originally built to accommodate between 550 and 600 students, house more than 700 students by using portable classrooms. There is little or no space left at those schools to add more portable classrooms, Dishno said.

As a result, trustees must decide whether to reopen one or more of the district’s four closed school sites--a middle school and three elementary schools.

They will also consider whether to sell off some of the district’s closed sites, all in the southern part of the city.

Because population growth is shifting to the northwestern part of the city, the district may need to build a new middle school there, Dishno said. The district could finance that construction with Holly-Seacliff development fees coupled with revenue from the sale of a closed school site.

Residents, however, have objected to the district selling off any sites because those facilities are used by youth sports groups and for other activities.