West County Issue School District Unification

The Oxnard Union High School District has hired a consultant to study

whether it should join with seven area elementary school districts.

Should unification take place to create one 43,000-student

school district?

Dolores (Val) Rains

Trustee, Pleasant Valley School District

I think a 43,000-student district is too large. Being a trustee of an elementary school district, I feel it is extremely important for students to get an excellent foundation in the primary grades. When you have a 43,000-student district, I don’t know where the priorities would be placed. Would they be placed more on the activities of the high school? In the past, Pleasant Valley has provided an excellent program for their students. We have concentrated on excellence in curriculum. We have alternative schools that were established early on and have served as models. I would want to be reassured that consolidation would not in any way minimize that excellence. If consolidation is purely for revenue building, I want to be certain that the revenues would benefit the student, because I feel very strongly that a school board trustee is a child advocate.

Jack Fowler

Trustee, Oxnard Elementary School District

No. One, it would make a humongous district in which the board and administration would tend to lose touch with what’s going on. Two, it is my impression that Hueneme, Ocean View and Rio are not interested in unification. I don’t understand why the high school district--when they’re so hard-pressed financially--would do this study. When the district gets too big, you tend to cross community lines and lose what is one of the primary reasons for having local school boards: to be responsive to the needs of the community. Oxnard, in its makeup, is substantially different from Camarillo. It doesn’t make sense to put the two of them into one large district. Also, the superintendent of a school district is the one that is most visible to the public and should be very much involved in the community’s life. If you’re serving several communities, that simply isn’t possible.

Herbert Templeman

President, Hueneme Elementary School District

I’m against unification. Hueneme Elementary School District has nine elementary and two junior high schools. We are the one district out of about 11 in the county that is debt-free. So why would we want to unify and take on other debt obligations? Our district enjoys a very good reputation. We have the highest-paid teachers in Ventura County. We’ve got a good staff and a very good administration. I can see no advantage to unification. Jesse (Big Daddy) Unruh (former Assembly Speaker), when he was alive and running California, wanted to unify all the school districts in the 58 counties in California, eliminating hundreds of school districts. They were trying to sell it that it would be cheaper. Conejo unified, and now their expenses are higher than they were before. So they didn’t save any money. I don’t know why Oxnard is pushing unification--it doesn’t make sense to me.

Bob Brown

Assistant superintendent, Oxnard Union High School District

The proposed consolidation study is in response to attempts by the Pleasant Valley and Oxnard Elementary school districts to carve out portions of our district to unify with theirs. If one looks at this proposed structure, what has been gained? Instead of one high school district and seven elementary districts, there would be two unified districts, one high school district, and five elementary districts. It would be a gerrymanderer’s nightmare. A more practical change, if change is needed, would be to consolidate the entire area served by the high school district into a unified district of 43,000 students with one governing board and one administration structure. There is a strong argument to preserve the ethnic makeup of the entire district by consolidation rather than by piecemeal unification. The study the high school district is about to undertake will give a more complete picture.

Steve Stocks

President, Oxnard Union High School District

Having one 43,000-student district would probably eliminate a minimum of a dozen top-level administrators and some of their support staff. You don’t have to pay for them, so it saves you money. In all likelihood, a consolidated district would be able to run more programs than the smaller elementary school districts. It would probably make a big savings in transportation and a good savings in buying power. Larger districts also have more clout than smaller districts with politicians when it comes to making sure that education get its fair share. Even though the district would be large, I don’t really think that you would lose touch with the elected officials. I still think it’s a good thing to maintain communication. A district office would undoubtedly be located in the center of the new district.