Smaller School Considered to Ease Crowding

The school district could relieve its overcrowded high schools with a smaller facility for vocational or magnet programs, rather than building a third, full-scale high school, under a proposal before a committee studying the school crowding problem.

With two or three more meetings left before final recommendations are made, the Ventura Unified School District’s long-range planning committee has already decided that Ventura needs at least one more elementary school and middle school in the fast-growing east end of the city.

But instead of creating a third high school, committee members Thursday seemed to lean toward creating some type of magnet or vocational school to handle the overflow population now filling Buena and Ventura high schools.

Not everybody can be doctors or lawyers, said committee member Mason Parrish. “We need people who can make bricks and put autos together. These people are important.”

Parrish, who teaches an auto and metal class at Buena High School, strongly advocated building a trade school.

“If you saw how many come from middle school with multiple Fs on their transcript, you’d be shocked,” Parrish said. “Then you put them in a comprehensive high school and they’ll fail, but if you put them in a place like auto shop or metal shop where it’s hands on, they end up being A students in my class.”

Others suggested a smaller magnet school designed to draw students for specialized study of some sort.

The committee of parents, teachers and administrators was created in the spring to address long-term approaches to dealing with Ventura’s overcrowded schools.

A comprehensive high school requires about 2,000 students in order to have enough funds to create a good curriculum, Supt. Joseph Spirito said. With 4,800 children, the student population divided into three schools would be 1,600, falling short of the ideal enrollment numbers. A magnet school with about 900 students might be a better alternative, some committee members said.

One possible site could be a 7.5-acre parcel of district-owned land south of Radcliffe Street and west of Day Road, near Ventura College. “It’s in a good location next to the college and has a pretty large lot, so there is space to do [an] alternative type of high school,” said Joseph Richards, assistant superintendent of business services. The land is now the site of a warehouse and storage facility for the school kitchens.

The cost of a comprehensive high school is about $45 million, district officials said. But Pat Chandler, assistant superintendent of education services, warned that the costs for a magnet school may not be any lower because although it may not have facilities such as a gymnasium, it would most likely require different types of specialized equipment.

Whatever option the school district pursues, it appears inevitable that a bond issue will be needed to finance the project, said Rob Corley, the committee facilitator.

The last school building constructed in the city was the administration building at Portola Elementary School in 1978. During the recession that hit Ventura in the early 1980s, several schools closed down because of low enrollment. With a steadily increasing student population over the decade, the district has had to seriously consider building schools again. By 2010, the city estimates, 4,800 more residential units will be built in Ventura.