Private High School Closes Its Doors

For nine years, Mountain View High School has offered alternative education and enrichment programs that were beyond the reach of most public schools.

But the private secondary school graduated its last class in June and has closed its doors, said Richard Handley, the school’s administrator since 1990.

The school began as a program for home schooling and evolved into an alternative high school that served the community in various ways, said Marilyn Mosley, former school administrator who now heads the Laurel Springs School independent study program in Ojai.

Founded in the mid-1980s, the school began as Oak Meadow High School before being renamed Laurel Springs High School. The name was changed again in 1995 to Mountain View.

“We weren’t experiencing declining enrollment and we had plenty of students who were interested in attending our school, but it was just a situation where many of us were contemplating changes in career direction,” Handley said.

Local public schools are also doing a better job these days of providing educational instruction and offering students more creative outlets than in the past, he said.