School Vote May Have Broken Law

The Conejo Valley school board’s sudden decision to exclude sixth-graders from the district’s newest school may have broken state law, legal experts said Wednesday.

And some parents question whether trustees thoroughly considered their decision to make Lang Ranch Elementary School the only K-5 school in the Conejo Valley Unified School District when it opens next fall.

Because that option wasn’t included on its agenda before Tuesday night’s vote, the board appears to have violated the state’s open-meeting law, known as the Brown Act, according to a Sacramento-based public law expert.

“If this is not an illegal surprise, I don’t know what would be,” said Terry Francke, an attorney for the California First Amendment Coalition.

Assistant Supt. Jody Dunlap, who serves as the Conejo board’s parliamentarian, said the action was appropriate because the vote was tied to the larger issue of attendance.

But a lawyer for the state Department of Education said trustees violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the law if they knew that the sixth-grade issue was a hot button in the community.

“You’ve got to ask if this is a collateral issue or one so substantially different that people interested in grade levels would not have” come to speak against it, said Michael Hersher. “That’s not such a bright line, unless the sixth grade has been a bone of contention in the community and the board was fully aware of that and still folded it in.”

Trustees said that their decision attempted to address Lang Ranch Elementary’s particular dilemma, and that they do not plan to exclude sixth-graders from any other elementary schools.

“This was a unique situation that needed a compromise,” trustee Dorothy Beaubien said.

After the meeting, many parents cheered and applauded the board’s decision. Parent Dina Schwalbach, whose child had been cut out by the school’s proposed attendance boundaries, said she favors the K-5 decision.

“I’m just so happy that we got in,” she said.

Over the last several weeks, angry homeowners have complained about 420 homes near Lang Ranch Elementary being left out of proposed attendance boundaries.

As a solution, trustee Dolores Didio has often suggested excluding sixth-graders from the school, which would provide enough classroom space for the extra 200 children anticipated from the surrounding neighborhoods.

Now, all sixth-graders in the district have the choice of attending either an elementary or a middle school. However, many parents in Thousand Oaks worry that forcing their children into an upper-level campus too early would rob them of childhood experiences.

Didio recently asked school district officials to look into her proposal. A report analyzing the K-5 option was sent to trustees Dec. 5, said board President Mildred Lynch.

The document was not made available to the public before Tuesday’s meeting, and the option of converting Lang Ranch Elementary to a K-5 school was not added to the board’s agenda.

Francke said if parents are sufficiently upset they could deliver a letter to the board within 30 days, asking that trustees “cure or correct” the situation, which in this case would be to rescind their vote and reschedule a meeting with a more detailed agenda.

Beaubien said that trustees can make motions whenever they see fit and that agenda recommendations are merely suggestions from the staff.

Jeff Klein, a parent in the district, said the board’s last-minute decision was calculated.

“This was planned from the beginning. They knew they were going to get support, because they were giving everybody the school boundaries they wanted,” he said. “They limited the debate. . . . If I had known about this before, I would have addressed that more specifically,” he said.

But trustees say that the board discussed a K-5 plan for Lang Ranch at an earlier meeting, and that people should have known the topic might have surfaced again.

“This was no shocker. Dolores has wanted this” throughout the district, Lynch said. “I don’t think the parents cared much how it was done.”

Lynch said she recently received much criticism from parents who wanted their children to attend Lang Ranch Elementary. She added that she thought it would have been worse to postpone a decision to another meeting in January.

“The longer you put it off, the more you put people through grief,” she said.

But Francke of the First Amendment Coalition said it probably would have been better to wait.

He cited two landmark cases in which school trustees lost lawsuits because their agendas were not clear enough.

In 1975, parents challenged the Santa Barbara school district because its published agenda mentioned three plans but trustees voted on a fourth proposal. The unanticipated option had been suggested by the superintendent in a newspaper interview.

The California Supreme Court decided the public should not have to learn what school trustees will consider based on which newspaper they read, when the law requires posting a specific agenda.

In a case that may be better-known, parents sued the Paradise Unified School District in Butte County in 1971 because the school board had posted a misleading item on its agenda. The district announced a “continuation school site change,” but the vote relocated the school to an existing K-6 campus, effectively closing an elementary school, Francke said.

The 3rd District Court of Appeals sided with the parents. The judges said that the agenda could have given “more meaningful notice,” Francke said.

As Conejo Valley Unified’s PTA Council president, Alice Humbertson said she definitely would have liked more notice.

“As a parent leader I should have known about this,” she said. “I’ve heard Dolores bring it up, but never heard board members agreeing with her and setting a new agenda. I’ve talked to the district before about keeping parents informed, so that people who care can respond.”

The idea of moving sixth-graders to middle school has been a continuing issue.

“This has been debated for a while,” Klein said. “If this [the sixth-grade choice] had never come up before, I could buy it.”

Some parents believe the board’s decision may have long-term effects.

“This was the quickest, easiest way to keep everyone happy,” said Tracy Ross, PTA president at Ladera Elementary School. “And it’s fixed now. But the next big argument is going to be, were parents’ rights taken away? That could be a bigger issue.”