School Officials Sit Out Prop. 187 Court Battle

With Proposition 187 now stalled in the courts, Ventura County school officials said they are relieved someone has asked state and federal judges to decide the measure’s legality.

And they are glad it’s not them.

While three of the state’s largest school systems--Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento--have sued the state over the proposition, smaller districts in Ventura County and elsewhere in California have mostly stood back from the fray.

“We’re basically spectators at this time,” said Jeffrey Baarstadt, assistant superintendent for the Hueneme district. “And I think we’re very content to be spectators.”

Some local school officials said they are only too happy to have courts take on the burden of deciding whether to allow the measure’s enforcement.

“This takes the politics out of the hands of the local district and gets the emotion out” of the debate at local schools, said Don Hodes, superintendent of Oxnard’s Ocean View School District, where junior high school students joined some of the walkouts prior to the election.

Because students know school officials have no influence on the court decisions, Hodes said, “it lessens the tension in the classroom.”

The only link local school districts have to the legal battle is that most happen to be members of the California School Boards Assn. Education Legal Alliance, a group that joined the suit by the big-city school systems.

Otherwise, Ventura County school officials--even those who publicly opposed Proposition 187 before the election--are staying out of the spotlight now that the measure has passed.

Because they are out of the spotlight, they are also not taking the heat.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, by contrast, the school board president faces a possible recall effort because of the district’s suit challenging the proposition.

Critics of the lawsuits over Proposition 187 argue against public agencies spending taxpayers’ money to fight an initiative approved by voters.

But local school officials said they will be grateful for the courts’ interpretation of whether the proposition can stand up as law. Whatever the outcome, officials said, they will follow the direction of the state Department of Education.

As Oxnard Union High School District Supt. Bill Studt said: “We’ve been directed to hold tight.”

On the day after the election, a state Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order barring public schools from implementing the measure until at least Feb. 8.

Then this week a federal district judge in Los Angeles issued yet another temporary restraining order that blocks immediate enforcement of nearly all of the proposition’s bans on health care, education and social services for illegal immigrants.

To reassure worried families, Ventura County school officials this week are sending letters to parents of all 119,000 public school students in the county advising that enforcement of the measure is at least temporarily on hold.

“It’s basically out of our hands right now,” Simi Valley school board trustee Debbie Sandland said.

The Ventura County Community College District is likewise encouraging all students to enroll for the spring quarter that begins in January.

“If there were some students out there who thought, ‘I don’t know whether I should enroll or not,’ we just want to let them know that nothing has changed,” college district spokeswoman Barbara Buttner said. “We still want them to come and sign up for their classes.”

Nothing will change at Moorpark, Ventura and Oxnard colleges, Buttner said, until the courts give the state’s community college system direction.

Leaving the matter to the courts and to the agencies engaging in the lawsuits also allows local schools to get on with what they do best.

“From the very point of time the court issued their restraining order, our folks were on to other business,” said Jerry Gross, superintendent of the Conejo Valley Unified School District. “We have school to run.”