City, Educators to Discuss Adult School

Hoping to find a permanent solution to a long-standing dispute over an adult school, members of the Thousand Oaks school board and City Council will meet face to face Monday.

Once a neighborhood elementary school, the Conejo Valley Adult School brings speeding cars, litter and pollution to the curvy, narrow Waverly Heights Drive, neighbors and council members contend.

The school is a thriving adult education hub in an appropriate area, counter school board members, adding that it provides upholstering, parenting, English as a second language and art classes to a hungry public.

To ease the neighbors’ woes, the two five-member panels will consider a number of solutions: adding speed bumps to Waverly Heights, shuttling students from a remote parking lot to the school, closing one of the school’s two gates, relocating the school altogether or adding a new access road to the site.

“It’s time to bring us together after many years of fruitless efforts by neighbors to end traffic and safety problems,” Councilwoman Elois Zeanah said. “A solution can be found, but we’ve just got to be willing to find it.”

Complicating matters is a turf dispute: The school district controls the campus, while the city rules the streets.

If the matter cannot be resolved amicably, the two entities may have to take their street fight into the courtroom. “But no one wants that,” Zeanah said.

The joint meeting will begin at 5 p.m. in the Conejo Valley Unified School District board room, 1400 E. Janss Road.