Development Spurs School Boundary Debate

Too many kids and too little space is nothing new at El Morro Elementary School, where portable classrooms have sat on the ocean-view campus for at least 10 years.

The school, built in 1954, is showing its age after a decade of dealing with space constraints. The septic system fails, pipes break, and the heating and air-conditioning system is fussy. Linda Purrington, the principal, has been told that her school could use a face lift.

Instead, it may get another 153 students in about two years. An estimated 625 high-priced homes are expected to be developed by the Irvine Co. along a section of the Newport Coast that lies in the Laguna Beach Unified School District.

Parents, who have packed public meetings in the last two months, don’t want more students enrolling in El Morro or the district’s other schools that are crowded or in need of refurbishment. Overcrowding is one complaint. Maintaining the city’s small-town feel is another.

“The strength of the Laguna Beach school system lies in its smallness,” said Betsy Jenkins, the PTA president at Laguna’s other elementary school, Top of the World.

Others are watching the school board debate, especially the neighboring Newport-Mesa Unified School District, which could take the new students if Laguna does not. And officials at the Irvine Co. said last week that they are frustrated with the lack of action by the Laguna school board after 18 months of negotiations.

But the developer’s $6.6-million offer to lessen the impact of 342 more students districtwide is tempting to Laguna school officials still reeling from the effects of the county bankruptcy and the district’s own financial crisis in 1996.

Despite that, members of the community, including the mayor and two other members of the City Council, want the school board to seek a change in district boundaries so the new homes sit in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, where officials are willing to accept the students.

“It isn’t that simple,” said Kathryn A. Turner, the president of the Laguna Beach school board. “It’s not good fiscal management not to consider all the possibilities.”

For Laguna Beach, there are benefits to the Irvine Co.’s offer: close to $6 million to pay for capital improvements to all schools, including $3.1 million for El Morro. Another $700,000 would be donated to the school’s education foundation.

Higher enrollments could enhance the district in ways other than financial. At Laguna Beach High School, an estimated 105 more students would allow for more course offerings, officials said.

The capital-improvement money is the biggest attraction to the cash-strapped board, which has deferred maintenance and repairs to its schools.

“There’s a much broader issue, which the community has to step up and face--modernization of facilities that are 30, 40 and 50 years old that is long overdue,” said Robert J. Whalen, a Laguna school trustee.

But many members of the community would prefer a boundary transfer, which must be approved by the county and the state.

“I’d like to see every effort to have them redrawn,” Mayor Steve Dicterow said. “Anything we do to the community that enlarges it concerns me.”

Parents have even said that they would support a bond measure to pay for school capital improvements so the city could turn down the Irvine Co.’s offer.

“No matter how much money is being offered, Laguna Beach has a sense of community that would be weakened by the Newport Beach people,” said Jenkins, the PTA president.

If the two school systems don’t agree on the transfer, the process will take at least six months. But Newport-Mesa officials said they would welcome the students if Laguna school trustees initiate a boundary change.

A new school scheduled for construction by the Newport-Mesa district in the Newport Coast area is designed for 700 children from kindergarten through the sixth grade. When it opens at Newport Coast Drive and Ridge Park Road in less than two years, only 350 students are expected to enroll. The district’s Corona del Mar High School can hold another 1,150 students despite a recent expansion to include seventh- and eighth-graders.

Not only is it possible for the children from the area to attend Newport-Mesa schools, it makes more sense, officials there said. The current boundaries will force children who live across the street from one another--or even some who live on the same street--to attend different schools.

The only problem for Newport-Mesa, its officials said, is the Laguna school board’s recent request for a four-month extension to decide whether to accept the $6.6-million mitigation agreement from the developer.

“For our planning purposes, it would be a nightmare for us,” Robert Francy, the interim superintendent of Newport-Mesa, said of the extension.