OXNARD : Schools to Discuss Sharing Operations

A proposal to share transportation, maintenance and other school services to help reduce operating expenses will be the subject of a meeting today among superintendents from eight Ventura County school districts.

The Oxnard Union High School District, which has hired a consultant to explore the possibility of merging services with its seven feeder elementary districts, will be the host of the closed-door meeting.

Officials from Oxnard, Pleasant Valley, Hueneme, Ocean View, Somis Union, Rio and Mesa Union elementary school districts will attend.

Oxnard high school officials have maintained that the eight districts could significantly cut expenses by merging transportation, maintenance, food, purchasing and warehousing operations. They said this would help cut down on administrative costs and duplication of services.

Norman Brekke, superintendent of the Oxnard Elementary School District, said he is open to the proposal.

He said all California school districts need to be looking for new ways to reduce expenses because of continuing cutbacks in education spending by the state.

The proposal to consolidate services was prompted in part by the Pleasant Valley and Oxnard elementary districts’ interest in annexing high schools from the Oxnard Union High School District to create their own unified school systems.

Both districts have all but dropped their annexation proposals for financial reasons and because annexing the mostly white Camarillo High School would increase the racial imbalance in the heavily Latino Oxnard high school district.