Capistrano Students to Be Shuffled This Fall

Thousands of students in the Capistrano Unified School District will attend different schools this fall after the board of trustees Monday night passed a controversial redrawing of attendance boundaries.

“It’s obviously a very painful process for all of us, believe me,” said Peter J. Espinosa, president of the Capistrano Unified school board, shortly before the 6-1 vote.

About 150 parents showed up at the meeting, most of them with children at the combined Newhart elementary and middle schools, opposing plans to move hundreds of elementary students elsewhere. But because the public hearing already had been held, the parents were not allowed to speak as the debate dragged on.

“They failed to look at the human factor of moving kids,” a disappointed Rosemary Alcocer said after the meeting.

The remaking of the K-8 school was but one among a laundry list of changes. The full slate of redrawn boundaries, which Capistrano Unified Supt. James A. Fleming presented to trustees in January, affects 25 of the district’s 32 elementary and middle schools.

The changes were made to ease crowding at many campuses, which Fleming said stemmed from two main factors: the district’s participation in Gov. Pete Wilson’s class-size reduction program and Capistrano Unified’s rapidly growing enrollment, which at around 38,000 students is up 7.5% from last year.

Most of Fleming’s recommendations involve moving some sixth-grade students to the middle school level and transferring students from crowded campuses to under-capacity campuses, he said.

None of the changes has drawn as much attention as the phasing out of Newhart Elementary School in Mission Viejo. The school currently shares a campus with Newhart Middle School.

As proposed by Fleming and approved Monday night, the entire campus will be converted to a middle school serving sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders. Some portables from the middle school campus will be moved to other schools that are in need of classroom space.

The approximately 430 younger students affected by the plan will be bused to two neighboring elementary schools.

The decision incensed Newhart parents, many of whom have said they bought houses within the school’s boundaries specifically so that they could enroll their children at a K-8 school.

“We want to stay here. We don’t see the need to move,” said Dawn Tengwall.

The lone dissenter on the board was Dorsey Brause, who said of Newhart Elementary, “You can only close a school if you have a valid reason . . . and we don’t have the right reasons here.”

During the past two months, the district has held public hearings and school meetings with parents to help clarify the district’s position. Fleming said he realizes that boundary changes are painful to many parents and students, but said they are necessary to ensure a quality education for all students.

The board made one minor change to Fleming’s plan: Students in small areas of Dana Point and Laguna Niguel will remain at Moulton Elementary School instead of being sent to Richard Henry Dana Elementary School.

Capistrano Unified is the third largest and possibly fastest growing school district in the county. By the time Wagon Wheel Elementary School and Las Flores Middle School open in the fall, the district will have opened 12 new schools in five years and have purchased or leased nearly 200 portable buildings to handle the growth. But despite the added facilities, Fleming said, the changes are still necessary to help solve the student housing problem.