YORBA LINDA : Bill Allows Students to Stay in District

The state Legislature on Thursday passed a bill that will allow students from western Yorba Linda to attend high school in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District.

Gov. Pete Wilson is expected to sign the bill, which would end a long-running dispute between the Fullerton Joint Union High School District and the Placentia-Yorba Linda district.

The agreement allows Yorba Linda’s ninth-graders to begin attending one of the three high schools in the Placentia-Yorba Linda district beginning in the 1993-94 school year. All Yorba Linda students attending Troy High will be allowed to finish their education there.

“We’re very excited,” said James O. Fleming, Placentia-Yorba Linda superintendent. “Hopefully, the governor will sign the legislation, and we will be in business.”

More than 700 Yorba Linda students are now bused to Troy in Fullerton, even though most live within walking distance of a high school in their own district. For decades, Yorba Linda students left their district at the end of the eighth grade to attend high school in Fullerton.

Fullerton officials opposed all efforts to build a high school in Yorba Linda, because they feared they would lose revenue and have to close a high school if they lost the commuter students.

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

Fullerton officials relented from their stance earlier this year, when a compromise was worked out that gives the Fullerton district additional money to compensate for the loss of funds when the Yorba Linda students leave the district.