IRVINE : No Money for Theater, Board Tells Students

Woodbridge High School thespians may have dreams of stardom, but they won’t even have a stage for the foreseeable future.

The finance committee chairman of Irvine Unified School District told parents and students who packed a school board meeting this week that there is no money to build a theater to replace the makeshift campus stage closed by county fire inspectors in April.

Of the city’s three high schools, Woodbridge High is the only campus without a theater. Students had been performing on a lecture hall stage that was extended by a parent work crew about 10 years ago. But county fire inspectors said the stage is too large for the room and in violation of safety codes.

Students put on an open-air performance of their spring musical, “No, No, Nanette,” on campus grounds. And during the next school year, students will use the University High School theater for productions. But practice space will be hard to find, parents say.

Woodbridge High parent Paul Harvey is encouraging the district to create a wish list of projects to be ranked in order of importance.

“They seem to have made past decisions based on whoever was campaigning the most at the time,” Harvey said. “I know a theater won’t be built in time for my daughter to see, but the community of Woodbridge needs to be assured that the process is fair.”

The district’s finance committee will review all construction projects planned for the next decade to consider whether a campus theater can be included.

“We by no means have said we’re not going to build it,” school board member Hank Adler said. “We’re going to methodically look at what we have on our plate and decide if we can do something.”