AGUA DULCE : State to Allow School Referendum
The State Board of Education has approved a referendum on the November ballot that will allow voters in Agua Dulce and Acton to decide whether to stop busing local high school students to Palmdale and send them to a neighborhood school instead.
If voters approve the parent-initiated proposal, about 400 students who now attend classes up to an hour away in the Antelope Valley Union High School District would transfer by 1997 to the Soledad-Agua Dulce School District.
The Soledad-Agua Dulce district, which now has 1,600 students in grades kindergarten through eight, would eventually build a high school on a 40-acre site near Wallace Canyon and Hierba roads, Supt. Tom Brown said. The land was donated to the district by Watt Industries, a Santa Monica-based developer that has proposed building two housing tracts in the area.
Brown estimated it would cost the district about $10 million to build a high school on the property. If the measure passes, some local high school students would attend classes at the local junior high school while the district explores ways to raise the money for the new school, including forming a community facilities district, Brown said.
The State Board of Education approved the referendum June 12, said Tony Turcotte, field deputy for the state Department of Education.
The board also rejected a recommendation by the Los Angeles County Office of Education to allow voters in the entire Antelope Valley Union High School District to participate in the referendum, saying that to do so would doom the proposal, Turcotte said.
About 11,000 students attend classes in the Antelope Valley district.
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