Board Revises School Choice Program

Families who have found that alternative programs at Meadows Elementary and Newbury Park High aren’t their speed now have a better crack at transferring to another school.

That’s because of a revision of the Conejo Valley Unified School District’s school choice program approved Thursday night.

The revision gives preference to parents who want to opt out of Meadows Elementary’s “meaning-based learning” program or Newbury Park High School’s block-scheduling, in which students take classes in stretches of one hour and 25 minute instead of the usual 45 minutes.

Since 1995, the Conejo Valley Unified School District has offered some school choice within district boundaries. Parents who live within the boundaries of a neighborhood school get first dibs on attending that school, but any extra slots can be filled by students from elsewhere in Thousand Oaks.

Under the revision, students at Newbury Park and Meadows would get preference for those extra slots.

This is particularly salient for Meadows parents, because class-size reduction and swelling enrollment have curtailed school choice space at all elementaries, according to district reports.

Typically, about 1,200 parents submit school choice applications each year. Of those applications, about 87% are approved, a report said.

But this year, the district expects to approve between 30% and 40% of applications--most of them at the middle and high school levels--because of the space crunch, according to Assistant Supt. Rich Simpson.