YORBA LINDA : Middle Students to Attend El Dorado

The Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District’s board has rejected Supt. James O. Fleming’s recommendation to assign Yorba Linda Middle School students to two of the district’s high schools.

The board Tuesday instead opted to assign all the middle school students to El Dorado High School, a move that could require the district to buy at least two $80,000 buses at a time when the district must trim its already tight budget.

After hearing several emotional pleas from parents to keep the students together, the board voted 3-2 to send them all to El Dorado High instead of dividing them between Esperanza and El Dorado, as recommended by Fleming. Trustees Judy Miner and Craig Olson cast the dissenting votes.

“You cannot divide these kids up,” said Chris Sanders, who has two children attending the middle school. “It is bad for morale and it is hard on the kids who are forced to go to Esperanza when their friends go to El Dorado.”

Fleming’s recommendation, which was based on a plan by a parental advisory committee, would have assigned students living in the Linda Vista Elementary School attendance area to Esperanza. Students in the Rose Drive and Mabel Paine elementary school attendance areas would have been assigned to El Dorado.

Although the recommendation included a four-year pilot choice program that would have allowed parents to send their children to any of the district’s three high schools, the district would not have provided busing for students who attended a school other than the one where they were assigned.

By changing the boundary so that students in all three elementary school attendance areas are assigned to El Dorado, the district must now provide busing for those who live more than 2.75 miles from the high school.

Under Fleming’s plan, 32 students would have been eligible for busing to El Dorado over a four-year period, which would have cost the district $3,000 a year.

The board-approved plan will make about 200 students eligible for busing over the next four years. If all those students choose to ride the bus to school, it could require the purchase of at least two buses in addition to operating costs. The district estimated operating costs at $23,000 the first year, rising to $69,000 per year for the fourth and later years.

But Fleming said the number of students who would actually ride the bus would most likely be just a fraction of those eligible. The figures presented by the staff represented a worst-case scenario, which Fleming said would probably not happen.

Even so, keeping the middle school students together will mean that any savings from shortening or eliminating other bus routes throughout the district must be used to pay for the new bus routes to El Dorado. The district had hoped to reduce its budget by eliminating some routes when future attendance boundary changes were implemented.

“We’re going to juggle (bus routes) to try to decrease our costs,” Fleming said Wednesday. “We can’t increase our (transportation) costs at a time when the state is giving us nothing more.”

In opposing the plan to assign all students to El Dorado, Olson said he was concerned that doing so would force the district to cut or eliminate educational programs.

“I’m thinking primarily about the cost,” Olson said. “Additional transportation costs mean a decrease in the quality of education.”

Noting that Fleming’s plan would allow parents to keep the middle school students together, Olson said the issue was solely a matter of transportation, and that the board would not be acting responsibly if it voted to increase busing costs without deciding how to pay for it.