Councilman Plans to Quit Schools Post

Clint Harper, a member of the Moorpark Unified school board for the last seven years, says he probably will resign that post when he is sworn into his City Council office Dec. 2.

“Even though I’m allowed by state law to serve on both [panels], I would not be doing a service to either the city or the school district,” said Harper, elected to the Moorpark City Council this month.

Harper’s impending resignation comes as the district is considering adjusting its school boundaries to eliminate what parents and school officials consider a high ratio of Latino students to whites at Peach Hill Elementary School.

Board member David Pollock said the four remaining members should be able to handle the situation without Harper.

“The four of us have worked very well together,” Pollock said.

Some Peach Hill parents have said their children are not getting the attention they need because students learning English take up too much of teachers’ time.

They also say Latino students shouldn’t be clustered in one school but integrated with students of all races.

Board members predict they will need to adjust school boundaries to resolve the issue.

Pollock said Harper’s departure could complicate the scheduling of board meetings as well as the workshops and forums the district has typically held when considering a boundary change, because the board needs a three-member quorum to take action.

Because board President Gary Cabriales is an airline pilot, he is often out of town and board member Tom Baldwin, a teacher in Thousand Oaks, sometimes runs into scheduling conflicts with work, Pollock said. “With a four-member board, we can only tolerate one absence before we don’t have a quorum,” he said.