Long-Awaited School a Source of Bittersweet Feelings for Parents

Chances are, more than a few of the parents planning to send their kids to Wood Ranch Elementary School this fall were grade-school students themselves when officials first talked about constructing the new campus back in 1982.

First emerging as part of a planned major west-end housing project, it has taken two developers one bankruptcy and 16 years to get the $9-million school built.

“It’s really going to happen,” said Janice DiFatta, president of the Simi Valley Unified School District board. “Right now, we’re looking OK.”

But for some parents who attached themselves to the project--those setting up committees to ensure their cherished school would be just so--Wood Ranch’s long-awaited opening is a bittersweet moment.

They still feel ignored as the district barrels ahead trying to meet a deadline just 70 construction days away. Two parents lashed out at trustees this week, upset that recent landscaping concerns over the viability of eucalyptus trees were rebuffed and attempts to hold a fund-raising dinner to purchase art for the school fell through.

“I can’t pretend everything is OK with our new school when it’s not,” Denise Guerrero, a mother of four and president of a 900-unit homeowners’ association in the Wood Ranch area, told trustees at Tuesday’s board meeting. “I’ve seen all-out assaults against those who suggest creative, viable solutions to problems . . . and helplessly watched the efforts of dozens of volunteers discounted and decimated due to district politics.”

DiFatta said she welcomes parental participation, but said there isn’t enough time to consider every suggestion if Wood Ranch is going to be ready for the more than 500 students who will arrive this fall.

“We’re down to the end of the wire here,” DiFatta said. “Sometimes it may be difficult for parents to accept that everything they want can’t happen right now. But our priority is getting the school completed. We must steer clear of any obstacle that could impede us from opening on time.”

Marybeth Jacobsen, a lawyer and mother of a 5-year-old who will enter Wood Ranch’s inaugural kindergarten class, has been offering advice to the district since before her daughter was born.

“To the extent there is a crisis of time, it is a crisis of the district’s own making,” Jacobsen told the trustees. “Exclusion of the community will not solve, but only exacerbate, the problem.”

Jacobsen started a committee of Wood Ranch homeowners five years ago that tried to work with the district in planning the new school. Beyond eucalyptus tress and fund-raisers, Jacobsen said, her group had for years tried to address larger issues such as enrollment numbers and construction costs that have both surpassed original projections. She blames a “revolving door” of short-term superintendents for the breakdown in communication and what she calls a series of broken promises.

“The big issue is mismanagement and the inability of the district to partner with parents,” Jacobsen said. “They’ve been moving forward while keeping us out of the loop. How can they build a school in our neighborhood, use our money and tell us we have no right to participate in the decision-making process?”

At Tuesday’s meeting, Jacobsen lamented how promises from past Supt. Bob Purvis to include her committee in the school’s planning process were broken.

Current interim Supt. Ken Moffett--the fourth man to hold the job since Purvis left in 1996--said there is not much he can do to sooth old wounds when he has a school to open.

“It’s a little tough when you’re facing a deadline to go back and say Bob promised this and that,” Moffett said. “I wish I could wave a magic wand and make everyone happy, but someone has to make the hard decisions.”

Moffett said he realizes there is a trust issue that needs to be resolved between the district and some parents, and he hopes to win it back. But he also said the district must not lose focus by dwelling on minutia.

“I like people to push for their schools, but sometimes I’m afraid we might be arguing about things that may not be important,” he said.

Jacobsen said she is fed up with what she calls years of district incompetence, and plans to band together with other activist parents on the east side of Simi Valley to start an information campaign that, she said, will “clean house” in the November elections.

“This is no longer just about Wood Ranch. It’s a Simi Valley issue,” Jacobsen said. “When the management of this district is not interested or willing to engage in critical thought, we don’t trust them to run our multimillion-dollar education business.”

Meanwhile, the work pushes on at the Wood Ranch construction site. There is still no parking lot or sidewalks, but most of the structure is up and carpenters are starting to install the classroom cabinetry.

Wood Ranch’s first principal, Karyn Crytser, was a teacher when she sat on the school’s original planning task force more than a decade ago. Now she visits the site regularly, charged with everything from setting up the library to ordering desks in a frantic effort to be ready by September.

“This is absolutely the craziest time. There’s so much to do and put together. It’s wild,” Crytser said. “A lot of people have worked real hard and struggled a very long time to make it happen. They deserve a wonderful school, and by golly, they’re going to get one.”