Trustees Seek to Bar Newport Coast Pupils

Yielding to community concerns, trustees will try to change district boundaries and keep an estimated 342 new students expected from development along Newport Coast from attending Laguna Beach schools.

The unanimous action from Laguna Beach Unified School District board Monday contradicts advice from an architect and a financial consultant that the board should accept a $6.6- million offer from the developer, the Irvine Co., and enroll the students.

The consultants said the money would easily offset the cost of adding more students and would provide more revenue to repair the district’s aging schools.

Instead, district officials will request a boundary transfer so that Newport Coast students would attend school in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

“The world isn’t run solely by economics,” Trustee Robert J. Whalen said Tuesday. “Sentiment in the community has to be given some weight.”

Parents have packed school board meetings to oppose higher enrollments, saying district campuses already are overcrowded. Some parents expressed satisfaction that the board yielded to their wishes.

“This is what we would like them to do,” said Ellen Harris, the president of the Parent-Teachers Assn. at El Morro School, where the bulk of the students would attend school.

If a boundary transfer can’t be negotiated before June 1, school board members said they would accept the Irvine Co.’s offer and enroll the students.

School officials also said they are hoping the City Council will follow through on its pledge to increase financial support to the schools if the board rejects the students. A recent meeting between some school and city leaders was “disappointing,” school officials said.

But Mayor Steve Dicterow said: “We intend to follow through with what we promised.”

Carol Hoffman, a vice president at the Irvine Co., said she believes a resolution is near.

“We don’t see it so much as a delay but as a sincere effort to negotiate with Newport-Mesa,” Hoffman said. “We know the district has really struggled with this decision.”

Newport-Mesa officials could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.