Move to New School Delayed Until Fall

Although an unusual land deal between the city and the Las Virgenes Unified School District was sealed earlier this year, the move to the preschool to be built adjacent to a municipal park will not be made until next fall.

In a land deal made in May, Westlake Village offered to lease to the school district a 3,800-square-foot parcel--part of which it acquired in a development agreement for Westlake North.

In exchange, the city retained ownership of a parcel on Foxfield Drive that it received from the district more than 10 years ago.

The district will use its parcel for a new special education preschool.

Although city and school district officials expected the preschool to be in its new digs in the Westlake North park by the start of this school year, it will continue to hold classes on the A.E. Wright Middle School campus until fall 1998, said Donald Zimring, the school district’s assistant superintendent of business.

Bob Theobald, planning director for Westlake Village, said that the four-acre park will probably be opened for use by mid-March, about the same time the district expects to receive the prefabricated classroom buildings. The move, however, will be put off until next fall to ease the transition to a new site.

Officials said the opening of the park and school was delayed by the process of selecting and building the classrooms, which is now underway, and making the necessary adjustments to the park in the wake of the change in land use.

The original site plans called for open space, which would require no utilities.

When the district decided to put a school there, the plans needed to be redrawn to include water, electricity and other utilities, Theobald said.

The city targeted the Foxfield parcel as one possible location for a permanent city hall/library facility, but it had only a few weeks to decide whether it would be used that way before ownership reverted to the school district.