High School Annexation Studied : Camarillo: A report says a district plan to pull campus into its domain would exacerbate racial imbalance in Oxnard.

The percentage of white students in Oxnard’s high school district would plunge from 31.8% to 18.6% if Camarillo High School were annexed to the Camarillo elementary school district, a report shows.

And the prospect of exacerbating the racial imbalance in the Oxnard Union High School District would probably lead state school officials to block any attempt by Camarillo’s Pleasant Valley Elementary School District to annex the mostly white Camarillo High School, state school officials said Wednesday.

The report, compiled by Pleasant Valley school officials and an educational consultant, examines whether Camarillo should form a unified school district encompassing kindergarten through 12th grade.

The report, which will be discussed at tonight’s board meeting, offers no recommendations, but presents the pros and cons of two options.

Pleasant Valley could annex just Camarillo High and Frontier Continuation High, which are part of the Oxnard district although they are within Camarillo city limits.

Or the 6,800-student Camarillo district could also annex Rio Mesa High School and consolidate with four surrounding smaller, elementary school districts: El Rio, Mesa, Somis Union and Ocean View.

Because the smaller elementary districts have shown no interest in merging with the Camarillo district, Pleasant Valley Supt. Shirley Carpenter said the easiest alternative would be to consolidate with Camarillo High and Frontier Continuation schools.

But Camarillo school officials emphasized that it is now up to parents and community residents to take any further steps toward unification.

“The district itself and the board cannot move forward with this,” Carpenter said. “It would have to be done by a volunteer group.”

“The next thing we have to do is find out how much public support there is,” school board member Jan McDonald said.

For Pleasant Valley to begin the long, bureaucratic process toward annexing Camarillo High and Frontier, state law requires one of two things to happen: either the boards of both the Pleasant Valley and Oxnard high school districts must approve the change or Camarillo voters must petition for unification.

Oxnard high school district officials have made it clear they would resist any efforts to transfer Camarillo High out of their district.

William G. Studt, the high school district’s superintendent, said he and other Oxnard school officials are concerned that losing Camarillo High School would increase racial imbalance in the five-school district.

In the face of such opposition, it would be up to Camarillo voters to start a petition drive.

Residents would have to collect the signatures of at least 3,800 voters in the school district to bring the unification issue before a county schools committee, and at least 9,500 to take the matter directly to the state education department, according to the report and county election officials.

McDonald said she believes there are at least 9,500 voters who would sign in favor of creating a unified Camarillo school district.

“Most people in Camarillo would prefer to have a unified school district,” she said. “Camarillo is a community now of almost 60,000 people. We’re no longer a little farming community.”

The question, she said, is whether any parents group or community organization would step forward to spearhead a petition drive.

If volunteers collected the 9,500 signatures, the issue would go before the state Board of Education in Sacramento.

Dan Reibson, a field representative on the state school board’s staff, said the 11-member board would probably deny the unification request.

Recent state Supreme Court decisions indicate the courts will not uphold any school district reorganization that results in increased racial imbalance, Reibson said.

“The racial and ethnic issues far outweigh most of the other criteria the board would consider,” he said.

With a 75% white student population, Camarillo High School is the only school in the five-school Oxnard district that is not predominantly minority.

The percentage of minorities at the other high schools ranges from 68.4% at Rio Mesa High School to 82.3% at Channel Islands High School, a school official said.

In addition to possible state opposition because of the racial issue, any quest to unify Camarillo schools into one district would face other hurdles.

About 25% of high school students from Camarillo attend Rio Mesa High on the outskirts of the city because there is not enough room for them at Camarillo High School. With unification, these students would be brought into the district.

The report suggests converting the school to a year-round schedule, a proposal that could arouse opposition from Camarillo parents who have previously protested against such a schedule change at local elementary schools.

Despite such potential obstacles, McDonald said the community should pursue the annexation of Camarillo High and Frontier.

“We need to take it at least to the point where someone says, ‘No, you can’t do it,’ ” she said.