MOORPARK : Schools Wanted in Neighborhood

A group of Moorpark parents who want school busing reduced will ask the school board Tuesday to let fourth-grade students living in the Campus Hills neighborhood attend the school closest to their home next fall.

The group, called Parents for Better Schools, has been demanding for months that Moorpark Unified School District allow students in the kindergarten through fifth grades to attend their neighborhood elementary schools.

Most school board members and district officials oppose the change, which they say would cause a racial imbalance in the schools.

But the school board decided a few months ago to form a committee of parents and school employees to study the issue.

The committee is to begin meeting in the fall.

Members of Parents for Better Schools will ask the board Tuesday to initiate a pilot program that would test the success of keeping elementary school children at their neighborhood schools.

Under the proposal, fourth-grade students who live in Campus Hills would attend that neighborhood’s elementary school, Campus Canyon School, beginning next fall, said Stacey Seeman, a member of the parents’ group.

Campus Canyon now houses kindergarten through third grades.

Graduates of Campus Canyon attend fourth grade at Flory School, located a few miles away in downtown Moorpark.

The pilot program could be a first step toward making Campus Canyon a kindergarten-through-fifth grade school for children in that neighborhood, Seeman said.

Making such a change would not cause racial imbalance at the school because Campus Hills is the most ethnically diverse neighborhood in Moorpark, she said.

But school officials said Friday that the group is jumping the gun by proposing a pilot program before the new committee has begun meeting.

“It’s premature to go ahead and try to make a change,” Campus Canyon Principal Frank DePasquale said.