Schools Chief Backs Plan to Rearrange Boundaries : Education: Buena High students would be transferred to Ventura High. A parents panel endorses the changes, but there is dissent.

The superintendent of the Ventura Unified School District recommended Friday that the school board approve a plan that would transfer students who live north of Foothill Road and in the Montalvo neighborhood from Buena High School to Ventura High School.

The new boundaries would also transfer to Buena High a group of Ventura High students who live in Saticoy. Students have been bused eight miles each way to Ventura High for years, although they only live four miles from Buena High.

The school board will vote Tuesday on the plan, which also affects the district’s four middle schools and several of its 18 elementary schools.

Supt. Cesare Caldarelli Jr. recommended that the changes be implemented in July for the 1992-93 school year.

“From an empirical point of view, and with the district’s long-range goals in mind, this plan makes sense,” Caldarelli said. The recommendations in the plan were based on an evaluation by district staff.

The plan that will be presented for next week’s board vote was one of two drawn up by a parents committee, and it eventually won the committee’s sole recommendation, Caldarelli said.

Under the plan, the new high school boundaries would balance enrollment between the two schools, eliminate the patchwork structure that placed children from adjacent neighborhoods in different schools and stabilize the district’s boundaries in the face of potential growth, Caldarelli said.

Buena High has 2,103 students, while Ventura High has 1,786, Caldarelli said. With new boundaries, he predicted, enrollment at the two schools will eventually differ by only 31 students.

“Our whole thrust in this process was to position the district now, and over time,” said Jean Rudolph, a former district employee who worked as a consultant on the plan.

A strong point of the proposed boundaries, Rudolph said, is that they take into account the likelihood that future growth in Ventura will occur in the city’s east end. “Doesn’t it make sense to position people now, so we do not have to make another move five years from now?” Rudolph asked.

Officials of the 15,000-student district first proposed the sweeping changes in January, 1991.

A major issue has been that both Ventura and Buena high schools are west of Victoria Avenue but much of the enrollment in the district and projected growth in the city are in eastern Ventura, east of Victoria.

Officials also have battled a longstanding perception of some parents and students that Buena High is better than Ventura High.

After parents raised opposition to the plan when it was presented last year, the district backed off and proposed a series of public hearings.

In August, the district created a parents committee with more than 60 representatives from the various schools, and asked members to come up with a new boundary plan, Caldarelli said.

Committee member Steve Magoon, a Montalvo parent who teaches at Buena High, said that although the committee endorsed the plan, it won by a one-vote margin. “It hardly seems that a one-vote margin is a mandate, does it?” he asked.

Magoon insisted that allowing Montalvo residents to remain at Buena High would best serve all parties. “We are closer to Buena, so (not transferring the students) would save the district from having to bus students, which in turn saves the district money.”

Cheryl Baldwin, a committee member representing the area north of Foothill Road, echoed Magoon’s sentiments.

Students who live within two miles of Buena High should not be bused to Ventura High, Baldwin said. “I really would prefer that my kids be able to walk to Buena.”

“There is an inconsistency in the plan . . . but no matter what, you are going to have to bus kids west,” Baldwin said, because most of the district’s students now live in the eastern end of the city.

“The layout of the district is just wrong, so the fiscal impacts have to be considered,” Baldwin said. “In the end, you need to go with the plan that requires the least amount of busing.”

Saticoy parent Peggy Buehler said parents of high school students in her area would be pleased with the plan. “For the last six or seven years, these kids have been bused to Ventura.

“It has been taxing on some of the families, seeing their children being bused clear across the city on these inordinately long bus rides,” she said.

Changes recommended by the district for the middle school and elementary school boundaries followed closely the plans drawn up by the parents committee, Rudolph said.

The changes include redrawing boundaries for two elementary schools. Students who live in the Stone Hedge development north of Telephone Road will no longer attend Juanamaria Elementary, but will be moved to Junipero Serra Elementary, where children from neighboring subdivisions go to school.

Also, students who live in the Rincon area will no longer be bused to Loma Vista Elementary and instead will attend Pierpont Elementary. The district had proposed sending them to Sheridan Way Elementary but the parents committee preferred Pierpont, a beach community school.

Implementing the plan in July would be difficult, Baldwin predicted, but she supports the idea.

“They are going to have an interesting time trying to back up and re-register students, but if the decision is made, they need to implement it as soon as possible so people are not left hanging,” she said.