Board to Consider Shifting Students

The Conejo Valley school board will consider options tonight about moving future Madrona Elementary School students to nearby Aspen Elementary School.

Madrona Principal Greg Coyle said his school is almost filled to capacity with 666 students. There is no way the campus could handle the projected growth to 850 children in the next five years, he said. Aspen has about 420 children attending now.

The best solution is to shift students to campuses where there is more room for them, said Sean Corrigan, director of planning and facilities.

District officials hope to even out the enrollment at both schools to about 570 students each by next year.

Students now attending Madrona would have the right to remain, but would have the option of attending Aspen.

Coyle said he is most worried about parents who have one or more children at Madrona, and whose preschoolers might not be able to go to the school their older siblings attend.

A few parents who attended a meeting Wednesday of the Madrona PTA questioned why the district doesn’t simply reopen some of its closed sites. Corrigan told the group that it would be too costly an option and that there are not enough children in the areas with closed sites to justify reopening an entire school.

Most of the calls to the district have been from concerned parents who want their children to attend the new Lang Ranch Elementary School, which is slated to open in the fall of 1998.

Trustees tonight also will consider boundary changes that would affect the nearly 600 students who will attend Lang Ranch. Some of those students will come from Ladera, Park Oaks and Weathersfield elementary schools.

The board will vote on the boundary changes at its meeting Dec. 11.

Interested parents may call the district at 497-9511, then press 1, then Ext. 359 to hear a tape recording of the geographical boundaries for Madrona and Lang Ranch elementary schools.