SANTA ANA : College District Sued Over Adult Classes

The Orange Unified School District has filed suit to wrest control of adult-education classes from the Rancho Santiago Community College District.

The suit, filed last Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, is part of a feud between the districts over which is best suited to provide the classes.

The suit demands that the community college district rescind its decision to offer certain adult-education classes beginning in the 1994-95 school year and transfer those programs to Orange Unified.

Orange Unified officials allege that the community college is providing classes and recouping state dollars without the formal mutual agreement required by the state education code.

But officials of the community college district said Wednesday that Orange Unified trustees and school district officials have repeatedly postponed and canceled meetings to discuss the mutual agreement.

Chancellor Vivian Blevins blasted the lawsuit and said Orange Unified officials are motivated by financial rather than educational reasons.

She said transferring the classes to the Orange Unified School District would cost taxpayers about $715,000 more because the state reimburses school districts at a higher rate than college districts.

But Tom Schrodi, director of instructional services for the Orange district, disputed that figure. He said that college district classes actually cost more to provide because the college receives money for maintenance and other student-related costs that the Orange district does not.

He said the main reason Orange Unified wants to provide the adult-education classes is that the college district does not offer enough classes to residents.

Blevins said the college would fight the suit. She said community colleges are designed to educate adults while school districts are designed to educate kindergarten through 12th-grade students. She said the college serves about 9,000 adult students each semester and receives about $3.5 million from the state, Blevins said.

The North Orange County Community College District is also named as a defendant in the suit. That district was sued by the Anaheim Union High School District and the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District.