Moorpark : Board Tables Plan to Realign School

At a meeting jammed by more than 100 parents and teachers, Moorpark school board members tabled a proposal to allow fourth-grade students in the Campus Hills area to attend their neighborhood elementary school next fall.

The vast majority of people at Tuesday’s Moorpark Unified School District meeting defended the district’s elementary school grade configuration and busing program. Only about 25 parents, who belong to a group called Parents for Better Schools, came to support their proposal that Campus Canyon School in Campus Hills be changed from kindergarten-through-third to kindergarten-through-fourth-grade next school year.

The board tabled the proposal at the beginning of the meeting and reaffirmed its earlier decision to appoint a task force to study the issue.

The only board member to vote against tabling the proposal was board President Tom Baldwin, who has aligned himself with Parents for Better Schools.

Despite the board’s decision to postpone action, parents and teachers on both sides of the issue spent five hours voicing their concerns to school officials.

Parents for Better Schools has campaigned over the last several months for Moorpark to change four of its five elementary schools to kindergarten-through-fifth-grade schools.

The fifth elementary school, Flory School, would become a magnet elementary school, under the group’s proposal. Flory is the only Moorpark elementary school located in a primarily Latino neighborhood.

Presently, three of the district’s elementary schools are for the lower primary grades, while two schools are for the upper elementary grades.

Parents for Better Schools contend it is dangerous for young children to be bused and emotionally difficult for them to change schools.

But supporters of the present configuration have said the group’s proposal would cause racial imbalance in the schools.