Meadow Oaks School Reverses Plan to Close : Education: Some parents are angry after making deposits at other institutions to ensure their children’s places.

Just six weeks after unveiling plans to sell their woodsy, private-school campus to the neighboring Viewpoint School, Meadow Oaks officials stunned parents and teachers even further Tuesday by announcing they will not close after all.

No explanation was offered for the reversal, which enraged many Meadow Oaks parents who have been scrambling to enroll their children in other private schools before fall and have spent hundreds of dollars in non-refundable deposits to ensure their places.

“They’ve committed suicide,” parent Todd Brown, whose 5 1/2-year-old daughter is a Meadow Oaks kindergartner, said of the school’s administrators. “Who is going to trust them now?”

Although Meadow Oaks will remain open under the current plan, some teachers may still lose their jobs because of the loss of an undetermined number of students to other private institutions, according to interim Headmaster Dennis Fliegelman.

But one teacher’s aide said Tuesday that staff members were not as concerned about their job prospects as they were pleased that Meadow Oaks would remain intact. The staff learned of the failed sale at school Tuesday morning; letters bearing the news were sent home to parents that afternoon.

“At first, everyone was pretty shocked. But overall everyone seemed happy,” said teacher’s aide Carrie Hogg, who noted that most teachers had been preparing to find new jobs since the disclosure of the proposed Meadow Oaks sale.

Viewpoint officials announced plans to acquire Meadow Oaks’ 17-acre site in February, citing a swelling waiting list and the need to expand their own eight-acre campus if they were to accommodate new students.

Yet, even as he invited Meadow Oaks students to apply to his school, Viewpoint Headmaster Robert Dworkoski offered no guarantee that all would find places--prompting hundreds of Meadow Oaks families to begin making other schooling arrangements.

The planned sale also created turmoil because of the two schools’ different educational approaches.

Viewpoint is a college-preparatory academy that runs through high school, requires students to wear uniforms and subjects them to rigorous academic standards. Meadow Oaks, which runs only through the eighth grade, offers a more creative, outdoorsy program.

Both Mulholland Drive schools charge tuition that can exceed $9,000 a year.

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On Tuesday, Dworkoski said “a little more than half” of the 350 Meadow Oaks students who applied to Viewpoint had been accepted. But now, he said, none would be able to attend Viewpoint because of the collapse of the Meadow Oaks sale and Viewpoint’s chronic lack of space.

“The Meadow Oaks students that were accepted to Viewpoint are returning to Meadow Oaks or to other schools,” Dworkoski said. “We are not able to accept them.”

Both he and Fliegelman refused to discuss the failed sale, saying they had signed a legal agreement not to do so. Original plans for acquiring Meadow Oaks followed the November death of co-founder Ken Ketchie, who opened the campus in 1963.