MISSION VIEJO : Trustees to Draft School Choice Plan

Responding to a statewide mandate, trustees of the Saddleback Valley Unified School District have directed district staff to formulate a policy allowing parents to choose the schools their children will attend in the 1994-95 year.

The policy will permit parents, within certain restrictions, to pick schools each year based on the teachers, programs or facilities they think are best suited for their children.

In this first year, district officials told trustees at their Tuesday meeting, the change could result in significant enrollment shifts among schools. Although officials said they expect the vast majority of parents to select their neighborhood schools, they said they have no way yet of predicting which schools will be more popular than others.

“We have to take almost a market-based approach,” said Trustee Frank L. Ury. “Open it up to parents and see where they fall.”

Trustees said the district should provide parents detailed information on how the open enrollment program will work and what each school has to offer. They suggested a variety of forums for providing the information, including parent-teacher association meetings, school tours, pamphlets, information nights or a fair where schools would set up booths to market their programs.

“The district has to make every effort that we can to inform the community of what we are doing and what the available programs are,” said President Dore J. Gilbert. Under a state law passed last year, the district is required to have a policy in place by July 1.

A draft of that policy presented by district officials Tuesday would give children residing within a school’s designated attendance boundaries first choice at attending that school. Parents would be allowed to send their children to schools outside their attendance boundaries only if space was available at those schools, according to the policy.

District officials are preparing criteria to determine which students will be given priority if demand for a school exceeds available space.

The district will require parents to provide transportation to schools other than their neighborhood school.

According to a schedule presented Tuesday, trustees will review the policy at their next meeting on March 8 and adopt it March 22. Parents would then be notified and provided with information through materials, events and meetings in early April, and would be required to submit registration requests by April 22.