District Backs Off Plan to Change School Boundaries

School officials are backing away from a plan to bus some students away from their neighborhood campuses to improve the ethnic balance at the district’s seven elementary and middle schools.

At tonight’s 7 o’clock meeting of the Moorpark Unified School District board, Supt. Thomas Duffy will recommend that the attendance boundaries not be adjusted in September with the opening of the new Walnut Canyon School.

This would please parents from two western neighborhoods, Heatherglen and Buttercreek, who have bristled at talk of busing their children to the new school on Casey Road.

Duffy plans to ask board members to make Walnut Canyon School a magnet school, the first in the district, open to children anywhere in the district.

The thought is that by making the campus a magnet school with special programs, the school may attract enough students from all backgrounds to ensure that other campuses remain ethnically balanced.

Duffy recommends that trustees in the next year review whether the student ethnic composition is balanced at each campus.

Most board members interviewed Monday generally approved of the plan, but said they have not lost sight of their goal to improve the district’s ethnic balance.

Although the district has long sought to have the ethnic mix of students at each school represent the overall district’s figures, two elementary schools are falling out of balance: Mountain Meadows has seen an increasing number of white students, and Latino enrollment is growing disproportionately at Peach Hill.

“I still think that a guiding principle in how we do anything at the schools has to be ethnic makeup,” said trustee Tom Baldwin. “You can’t just forget about it and say let the chips fall where they may. I can’t go along with that. I would be willing, however, to see how it’s working and revisit it [next] February.”

Special programs at Walnut Canyon, if successful, will attract students of all ethnicities, Baldwin said.

If in a year or two the ethnic mix at each campus is not similar enough to that of the entire district, school officials will have to rethink their plans, Baldwin said.

Trustee Tom Pollock agreed the risk is worth taking, though he worries that the district has no idea who will ultimately enroll.

Trustee Gary Cabriales said he is encouraged by results of a recent survey, which indicated that many parents would be willing to send their children to the new school, especially if special programs are offered. But, he added: “What if we don’t have enough people to sign up?”

Duffy has recommended that the Walnut Canyon campus become a kindergarten through fifth-grade school offering child care, after-school education and recreation programs.