School Districts Negotiate Pact in Attendance Dispute

Officials of the Fullerton Joint Union High School District and the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District have tentatively agreed on legislation pending in Sacramento that would allow students from western Yorba Linda to attend high school in the Placentia-Yorba Linda district.

Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress) will amend a bill she is sponsoring that allows students to attend schools within the district in which their parents work, settling the long-simmering dispute between Fullerton and Yorba Linda school officials.

Allen’s amendment provides for Yorba Linda’s ninth-graders to begin attending high schools in the Placentia-Yorba Linda district beginning in the 1993-94 school year.

Yorba Linda students who now are bused to Troy High School in Fullerton will be allowed to complete their course of study there.

More than 700 Yorba Linda students in grades nine through 12 are now bused to Troy, even though most live within walking distance of one of three high schools in the Placentia-Yorba Linda district, said district Supt. James O. Fleming.

For decades, Yorba Linda students remained in their own town through the eighth grade and then went on to a Fullerton high school.

Numerous efforts were made over the years to have a high school built in Yorba Linda, but Fullerton officials, fearing that they would have to close a high school and lose revenue if they lost the commuter students, successfully argued that Yorba Linda’s student population could not support a high school.

When the Yorba Linda and Placentia school districts merged in 1989, the Fullerton district agreed not to oppose the merger only if the Yorba Linda students continued to attend Troy.