BREA : Board Cancels Plan to Transfer Students

After months of debate, Brea Olinda Unified School District trustees have decided not to force about 100 students to transfer from their present overcrowded schools to less crowded ones in their own neighborhoods.

Parents who had complained that their children would be traumatized if required to shift schools said they are pleased with the school board’s decision this week.

The most intense opposition had come in response to trustees’ efforts to send some students from two predominantly white elementary schools to attend Laurel Elementary School, where half the students are Latino.

District officials and community leaders had accused parents who protested the proposed change of racism. The parents denied the charges and board members modified the boundary change proposal.

Under the current plan, all Brea children who attend the overcrowded Mariposa and Arovista elementary schools will be permitted to stay there, at least for another year. Any student who does not live in Brea will attend schools that are not overcrowded.

The school attendance boundary issue “started out being really messy,” Trustee Frank Davies said. “But it came to a very good resolution.”

School board members, however, warned that attendance boundary changes will be considered again in the next three to five years because of expected population growth.