Parent Protests K-5 School Plan

In a move that could foreshadow a lawsuit, a parent fired off a letter to school district officials Monday demanding they rescind last week’s vote to close the Lang Ranch Elementary School to sixth-graders and hold a new meeting.

“I request a meeting that all affected parties can attend before a final resolution on the boundary issue is enacted,” wrote Rudy Andl, who accused the board of violating the state’s open-meeting law, known as the Brown Act.

Trustees voted Dec. 9 to make Lang Ranch Elementary School the district’s first kindergarten through fifth-grade school when it opens next fall. The agenda item on the issue, however, only mentioned the board’s intent to vote on attendance boundaries.

“The board is quietly and underhandedly bowing to the political pressure of those parents that want the boundary to be changed to suit their interest. . . .,” wrote Andl, who wants his child to attend sixth grade at Lang Ranch. “But the board has been keeping a lot of the affected people in the dark.”

Under state law, once the district receives Andl’s correspondence, technically known as a “cure and correct” letter, it has 30 days to respond. If he doesn’t like the reply, Andl can file a suit in Superior Court.

“As I sit right now,” he said, “I’d be inclined to file a lawsuit.” Andl said he would seek neighborhood support of his legal action if it comes to that.

The school district’s parliamentarian said the board vote was legal because it pertained to the larger issue of deciding who should go to the school.

Dolores Didio, elected president of the school board last week, said Andl’s request for another meeting was a possibility. But she said she wanted to hear more community outcry before considering rescinding the vote that excluded sixth-graders from Lang Ranch Elementary, which is under construction on Sandhurst Avenue.

Wanting to include about 420 nearby homeowners in the school’s attendance boundaries, Didio had suggested restricting the new school to kindergartners through fifth-graders.

Terry Francke, a public law attorney with the California First Amendment Coalition in Sacramento, said government groups usually hold new meetings after receiving a letter such as Andl’s, rather than allow the controversy to reach court.

“Normally, when faced with a letter, boards act faster than 45 days,” Francke said. “An agency usually does something to placate the objector. They don’t have to admit to anything, but they can hold a new meeting just to be clear about it [their actions]. But that doesn’t compel them to change their minds.”

All other elementary schools in Conejo Valley Unified School District include sixth grade. But while parents currently have the choice of sending their sixth-graders either to elementary or middle school, district officials warn that in years to come, population changes might eliminate the option.

Although district officials wrote internal memos analyzing how Didio’s idea could work, the board agenda was never changed to indicate trustees would be voting on the district’s first K-5 school. As written, the vote was to either approve or disapprove revised attendance boundaries suggested by the staff.

But Didio said the language on the agenda was clear enough.

“The K-5 idea was an option,” she said. “At least in my mind. And I talked about it with a lot of people. . . . I don’t suppose I’m against having another meeting to [comply] with the law, if that is necessary.”

Didio said she believes that the school board acted in good faith and did not intentionally violate the state’s Brown Act.

“The intent of the Brown Act is not to do things behind closed doors,” she said. And the discussion certainly was made in public, Didio said, because almost 200 people showed up at last week’s meeting and many were given time to speak.

Didio said she received as many as 500 phone calls or letters in recent weeks from angry homeowners whose children were previously excluded from Lang Ranch Elementary’s attendance area.

But since the board, in a 4-1 vote, decided to include most of those students by making it a K-5 school, Didio said she has not received any calls from parents upset with the decision.

But Andl maintains that only certain special-interest groups--those who wanted their children in the new school--attended the meeting. He said discussing the topic of excluding sixth-graders without advance notice, even if it is conducted in open session, is wrong.

Andl, a personnel recruiter for insurance companies, said if he had known about the K-5 vote, he would have distributed fliers around his neighborhood to alert others who might have wanted to debate the issue or discuss the plan’s potential to increase traffic on nearby streets.

“The thing that tweaked me the most is the method they did this,” said Andl, who wants his son, Jake, 1, to eventually be able to graduate from the sixth grade at Lang Ranch. “I was assured the issue wouldn’t be put on the table. . . . I’d like to have access to information beforehand, so that I can go down there and scream and yell if I want to.”