CAMARILLO : 80 Attend Meeting on Crowding Plan

About 80 parents, teachers and other employees of the Pleasant Valley School District attended a meeting Thursday for a long-awaited board of trustees vote on a plan that would ease crowding starting in the fall of 1993.

The plan, put together by a committee of Camarillo parents, teachers, administrators and board members, would change intermediate to middle schools by 1993, close one or two elementary schools and pave the way for year-round school.

“They have to do something, closing a school may be inevitable,” said Diane Kline, a committee member and parent of two children at Valle Lindo School.

“Basically, we’re for any plan that’s the best for the children,” said Roger Lininger, president of the Pleasant Valley Education Assn., the district’s teachers’ union. “We’re willing to try anything.”

The plan assumes that a new elementary school will open by September, 1993. It calls for making Los Altos and Monte Vista Intermediate schools and Las Colinas School into middle schools. Los Altos and Monte Vista would take students in grades six to eight, and Las Colinas initially would enroll students in grades four to eight, and later only six to eight.

Under the plan, sixth-graders would be removed from all elementary schools and transferred to the new middle schools, rendering some elementary schools too small to operate cost-efficiently. The recommendation to close one or two elementary schools would save $200,000 per school.

By closing one or two schools, officials could raise enrollment in the other elementary schools to 600, which is the ideal size for a year-round program.

Shuffling the sixth-graders to the middle schools would require the acquisition of 36 portable classrooms at a cost of $35,000 each.

After two unsuccessful school bond measures, the plan recommends trying a third time in March, 1993.

The plan also offers an alternative proposal: to leave the school system as is. That would require the purchase or lease of 56 portable classrooms and 13 buses by the year 2000 to handle the projected increase in enrollment, Hamilton said.