Welcome Signs of Cooperation

It wasn’t a Hollywood kiss but last week brought at least tentative gestures of reconciliation in the hurtful spat over the Conejo Valley Adult School.

The Thousand Oaks City Council voted to remove the barricade it had erected in response to more than five years of complaints from residents along narrow, curving Waverly Heights Drive, which leads to the school’s back gate. In return, the Conejo Valley Unified school board promised to keep that gate locked except during emergencies and special events and to back off from a threatened lawsuit against the city.

The school has been a bone of contention as its wide-ranging curriculum has grown in popularity, attracting more than 1,000 students each evening--most of them driving solo and many of them in a hurry--to the former elementary school.

The city’s barricade was an attempt to get the school district to acknowledge the traffic, noise and safety concerns of the school’s neighbors. Those neighbors would like to see the busy and lucrative operation moved elsewhere and the building returned to service as an elementary--something the school district says it cannot do within the next few years.

We welcome these faint signs of cooperation after the confrontational posturing of a few weeks ago. We encourage both sides to make good on their word.

The school district could be a better neighbor by giving area residents advance warning about the special events for which it plans to open the gate and by continuing to take whatever steps it can to solve the larger problem by further staggering class times, moving more classes off site and, in time, seeking a more congenial location for this important and thriving program.