OXNARD : School District Considers Merger to Help Save Costs

Trustees of the Oxnard Elementary School District are considering a possible merger with the Oxnard Union High School District to save administrative costs and coordinate educational programs from kindergarten through 12th grade.

At a meeting tonight, the trustees will decide whether to pay $4,500 to Educational Research Consultants of Sacramento to examine the effects that a merger would have on the two large districts, said Supt. Norman Brekke of the 12,500-student elementary district.

The study would evaluate the finances, operations, personnel and instructional programs of a combined district, Brekke said.

But before any merger is approved, both county and state education officials must support the change, he said.

“I personally believe the Oxnard Union High School District is geographically too large,” Brekke said.

“It is ideally suited for some sort of division.”

While the idea of merging Oxnard’s elementary and high school districts has surfaced occasionally over the last 30 years, Brekke said the impetus for the proposal this time comes from outside either district.

In a recent decision, trustees of the 6,200-student Pleasant Valley Elementary School District in Camarillo voted to explore forming a unified school district with Camarillo High School.

Camarillo High School now belongs to the 11,100-student Oxnard Union High School District, a sprawling district that oversees five high schools in the Oxnard, Camarillo and Port Hueneme areas.

Brekke said merging Oxnard’s elementary and high schools into a single district would improve educational planning while reducing administrative costs.

“One of the prime advantages would be the coordination of instruction from kindergarten through 12th grade,” Brekke said.

“It’s difficult to provide effective coordination where seven elementary districts feed into one high school district, which is the case now.”

Brekke said studies have shown that the ideal size of unified school districts falls within a range of 20,000 to 40,000 students.

“There is a general consensus that a district the size of Los Angeles is too large and unmanageable, while a district under 5,000 students would find it difficult to provide all the programs and services found in a typical high school,” he said.

Any restructuring of districts would have to pass the scrutiny of county and state education officials, who will be concerned over the issue of ethnic balance, Brekke said.

In the Oxnard elementary schools, 84% are ethnic minorities, while most students in Camarillo are white, he said.

A Camarillo unified district could achieve better ethnic balance by absorbing several small elementary districts in the minority enclaves of El Rio and Somis, Brekke said.

If approved, the consultant’s study of unification issues would be completed within two months, but any merger would remain at least two years in the future, Brekke said.