Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : New School District Offers Students a Choice

Wanted: ninth-grade students interested in attending school in a “small rural school setting” away from the “giant urban complex” of the Antelope Valley.

Like a salesman offering the latest in widgets, the Acton-Agua Dulce Unified School District is marketing its new product--a choice between districts for a high school education in the Antelope Valley. The coming school year marks the first time in the modern history of this north Los Angeles County area that more than one school district will offer secondary education.

And officials at the Acton-Agua Dulce district want to make sure that parents and students know they have a choice.

On Tuesday the school district took the unprecedented step of distributing a one-page, single-spaced press release detailing the advantages of their product over the secondary education offerings of the Antelope Valley Union High School District.

“It’s something you don’t see very often,” said Tom Brown, superintendent of the Acton-Agua Dulce district. “In fact you don’t see it at all in the Antelope Valley because there’s only been one place to go.”

Voters in the two rural communities, situated between the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys, in November overwhelmingly approved expanding their school district from kindergarten-eighth grade to K-12. The new unified district, the first in the Antelope Valley, legally comes into being Thursday.

School district trustees decided in their first year of offering secondary education to add only the ninth grade, with the plan to increase one grade level each year. Students in the 10th-12th grades will continue attending high schools in what the news release describes as the “giant urban complex” of the Antelope Valley Union High School District.

Acton-Agua Dulce, which the news release said is offering “quality education without gangs, graffiti or drugs,” is prepared to have 75 ninth-grade students when school starts in the fall.

Brown said that 64 of the district’s 150 ninth graders have already registered to attend high school in Acton. About half of the students are expected to apply for inter-district transfers to go to an Antelope Valley high school. Some parents have expressed reservations about the amenities the new district will be able to offer in its first year of operation.

Although money would seem to be a motive for the district’s news release extolling its virtues, since more students means more revenue from the state, Brown insisted that is not the case.

“We’re just letting people know they have a choice,” he said, noting that he expects the district’s marketing efforts will actually bring few, if any, students.