Homeowners Petition for New School Boundaries

Steaming parents who fear their children may be left out of the Conejo Valley’s newest, swankiest elementary school are hustling this weekend to sign petitions in the hopes of changing school trustees’ minds.

More than 100 parents attended an unusually raucous Conejo Valley Unified School District meeting Thursday night, where they complained that their homes, which encircle the Lang Ranch Elementary School now under construction on Sandhurst Avenue, were booted out of the school boundary lines.

What irks the parents most is that future homes from the 250-home Woodridge development were included in the map, while many of their own children were consigned to Ladera, Weathersfield and Park Oaks elementary schools.

The kicker to many parents is this: Woodridge kids, whenever they come, will be bused to the Lang Ranch school, while children who could easily walk to the new campus will go to schools on the other side of California 23.

“When you go into Baskin and Robbins you take a number and you wait . . . ,” said Joan Downey, whose Parkview Drive home was not included in the original map. “Tell that to the Woodridge families when they get here.”

The Woodridge homes will be built in a figure-eight shape on hills northeast of the Lang Ranch school. While Lang Ranch is the closest campus to the new development, geography and roads dictate that few if any of the children can walk to school.

As many as 509 homes that lie in a circular shape surrounding Lang Ranch--those south of Sunset Hills Boulevard, east of Erbes Road and north of Avenida de Los Arboles--have been left out of the school’s proposed attendance zone.

Residents say they were promised--by real estate agents, developers and principals--that their children would attend the new school.

Their argument to the school board: Since Woodridge children would have to ride the bus anyway, just make the trip a bit longer and drop them off at a nearby school like Park Oaks Elementary School on Calle Bouganvilla.

The school board is set to vote on the matter Dec. 10. But the outcry from residents prompted trustees to direct district facilities manager Sean Corrigan to begin redrawing the map on Friday.

He was told specifically to look at including the majority of homes on Parkview and Laurelwood drives, which run directly to the new school. Originally, Corrigan’s proposal was drawn on the basis of development tracts, not by neighborhood streets.

In his report, Corrigan stated that his boundary lines were based on “strong logical connections.”

He also added that he had no idea why certain homeowners say they were promised their children could attend the new school.

Citing documents from the city’s Lang Ranch Specific Plan of the mid-1980s, those 509 homes were never included, he said.

“It would be wonderful if we could include those 509 homes,” Corrigan said. “But there is simply not the room.”

The $12.4-million Lang Ranch Elementary School, which is slated to open in September, will be the first air-conditioned, all-enclosed school with windows in the district.

With room for 600 students, it will boast pristine athletic fields and ball courts. Without passage of the district’s $97-million bond earlier this month, however, it is unclear whether the school will receive almost $1 million for computer technology wiring and other amenities.

Dina Schwalbach of Brookfield Drive--which is not included in Corrigan’s map--is hitting the streets this weekend with a clipboard and pencil.

“I’m planning to circulate a petition and submit an alternative proposal for a boundary,” she said.

Basically, Schwalbach’s plan kicks the intended Woodridge homes out of the picture and adds her neighborhood of Sunset Braemar. That way, her third-grader, Jeff, could walk to Lang Ranch instead of being driven to Ladera Elementary School, where he goes now.

Schwalbach has support.

“Why do we have to be considerate of people who aren’t here?” said neighbor Downey.

Though she doesn’t have any children, Downey said she is concerned that the property value of her home will drop without the school to market as an added asset.

Many say the inclusion of Woodridge looks fishy.

“It appears as if the school district is willing to give new homeowners who pay a premium the Lang Ranch school in exchange for developers fees,” said Jeffrey Klein of Parkview Drive.

He wants Woodridge students to be bused to Park Oaks Elementary School so that his daughters--Lauren, 7, and Marissa, 3--can walk to Lang Ranch.

“Are they cutting a deal?” Klein asked. “That’s sure what it looks like.”

Corrigan answered Friday, “Developers fees have nothing to do with it.”

He drew the maps based on geographical proximity. If Woodridge children were bused to other schools, he said, then those schools would be overcrowded and another map would have to be drawn to juggle that problem. “It’s a daisy chain effect,” Corrigan said.

Los Angeles-based Woodridge developer Michael Rosenfeld was upset when he learned how many people showed up at the board meeting and how angry they were.

Out of the $1.8 million he paid in developer fees, Rosenfeld said he wanted to be “sensitive to the community,” and so he included about $400,000 “to accommodate the additional kids and to ensure that there were more than adequate funds to construct new classrooms.”

While people are racing around trying to convince the school board to change its map, trustee Dolores Didio already has an idea.

Why not make the new Lang Ranch school a place for kindergartners through fifth-graders, she mused, and have sixth-graders attend middle school?

“There is reluctance to look at a K-5 district,” she said, adding that without sixth-graders, Lang Ranch would have plenty of room. “If people would just get over this whole sixth-grade thing.”

FYI

Here is a list of the development tracts included in the Conejo Valley Unified School District’s original attendance boundary proposal for Lang Ranch Elementary School:

Brock Homes

Meadowood

The Summit

Eagle Ridge

Woodridge

Knolls and Westlake Canyon apartments

Verdigris

For information on proposed elementary school boundary lines, call the district at 497-9511. Push 1 when you hear the operator’s voice, then hit Ext. 359.