HUNTINGTON BEACH : School District Sets New Boundaries

Eight months after approving a controversial grade-level reorganization, the Ocean View School District board this week set new attendance boundaries that will become effective this fall.

The new boundaries reflect the closure of two schools, the conversion of four other schools to middle schools and other changes that will increase busing fivefold districtwide.

The grade-level reconfiguration seeks to maximize the district’s teachers and resources by concentrating them in fewer schools.

Additionally, the boundary changes will help correct racial imbalances among the district’s schools.

The district desegregation plan is less stringent than had been originally planned because of a state appellate court ruling that relaxed school desegregation laws throughout the state. The plan originally had called for Oak View Elementary School to include a magnet program at the predominantly Latino school.

Because the magnet program has since been scrapped, though, Oak View’s boundaries were expanded to include 519 neighborhood school students. Previously, the school was to have included 175 magnet school students.

As a result, Oak View will remain the district’s most heavily segregated school, with 92% of its students members of ethnic minorities. School district officials, however, are encouraging students from other schools to voluntarily move to Oak View to help balance its racial mix.

Overall, the boundary changes mark a movement by the district toward racial integration. Oak View will be the district’s only school considered racially isolated under Ocean View’s criteria.

Crest View and Haven View schools, on opposite sides of town, will be closed. The district’s current system, which combines kindergarten through sixth-grade schools and K-8 schools, will be discontinued.

Marine View, Mesa View, Spring View and Vista View will become the district’s first middle schools, serving students in grades six through eight. The remaining 11 elementary schools will serve kindergartners through fifth graders.

Under the new plan, about 3,000 of the district’s 8,400 students will be bused daily, five times more than the current rate.

The busing increase is due to dramatically enlarged boundaries for the middle schools.

Some parents still oppose the reorganization because it will expand busing, cost more than $2.5 million and will divide neighborhoods among different schools.

Trustees this week also approved general instructional programs for the newly created middle schools.

New School Boundaries New boundaries have been drawn for 11 Ocean View School District elementary schools, which for the first time will serve kindergarten through fifth-grade students only. The district’s four newly configured middle schools will serve students in grades six through eight.