HUNTINGTON BEACH : School, City Officials Discuss Fund Crisis

In a meeting that participants said could be a “turning point” for better relations between schools and city government, the superintendents of the five school districts that serve city youngsters discussed the education financial crisis with city officials this week.

Mayor Jim Silva called the school and city officials together for the meeting Monday night amid concerns that financially strapped school districts, in their desperate search for funds to prevent further cutbacks and closures, may turn many of their vacant sites into residential developments, causing a permanent loss of open space and recreation facilities.

“We’ve gone about our business of providing education and city officials have operated from the city perspective, and we’ve isolated ourselves and have been ignoring each other,” said Supt. David J. Hagen of the Huntington Beach Union High School District.

But Hagen also told the gathering of the City Council, Planning Commission, city staff members and representatives of the Fountain Valley, Westminster, Ocean View, Huntington Beach City and Huntington Beach Union High School districts that some steps have been taken in the right direction.

He cited joint planning and financing for remodeling of the entrance to the stadium at Huntington High School and the conversion of part of the area into a skateboard park as recent cooperative acts. City and school officials are also exploring talks for joint refurbishing of the Huntington Beach High School auditorium and partnership for a possible swim stadium at Huntington or Ocean View high schools, he said.

There are 50 public school facilities in Huntington Beach. Seventeen are closed and two more will close in June.

School officials said they may push for commercial development of three of the sites--one each in the Ocean View, Westminster and Fountain Valley districts. The Fountain Valley district has been given the OK to build 58 residences at its vacant Bushard School site.

Some officials said privately that the lack of communication has mostly occurred in dealings between school representatives and planning commissioners, and city staff members. It reportedly came to a head in January, when proposals by Huntington Beach Union High School District officials to develop homes and a shopping center came before the Planning Commission.

District officials, who say they’ve lost about $32 million in revenue since 1979, had worked on plans since 1988, but were unaware that city staff had recommended denial until four days before the commission meeting, according to Planning Commissioner Roy Richardson.

The commission continued the hearing until March and then rejected it. The project, calling for more than 200 apartment units at the site of the former Wintersburg High School, was approved by the City Council on May 4.

School officials from the five districts, which have a combined enrollment of 43,030, blamed financial woes on nearly total dependence on state revenue rather than local property taxes. The officials said they receive less than the state average for students’ daily attendance and noted voter reluctance to approve fee or tax hikes to supplement funding.