Board Approves Soria School Site Despite Pesticide Concerns

The elementary school district plans to move forward with acquiring a 14-acre site in the city’s southeast corner for its newest school, Juan Lagunas Soria, despite parent and community concerns about the possible dangers of nearby pesticide spraying.

After listening to comments from nearly 20 parents and community members supporting and opposing the site during a public hearing at Lemonwood Elementary School on Wednesday night, trustees voted 3 to 2 to certify the project’s final environmental impact report and to approve the site.

Trustees Francisco Dominguez, Susan Alvarez and Dorothie Sterling voted in favor of the report and the site approval, while Ray Gonzales and Arthur Joe Lopez opposed both.

The land where Soria school is to be built is just outside the city, at the east end of Emerson Avenue just west of Rice Avenue. It is surrounded by fields on three sides.

If there aren’t any delays during negotiations, officials say construction would begin in summer 2000, and the 1,000-student school would open in late 2001. The entire project is estimated to cost about $13 million, including the land purchase.

Parents and local farmers argued that the fumigant methyl bromide used on crops in those fields could affect the health of students and staff. And in fact, the environmental report states that pesticides are currently used at those farms and could be a health risk if no precautions are taken.

“You are the trustees of our children’s lives,” said Jean Harris, a former school board member. “If one child or one staff member could be at risk, there is only one answer--this is the wrong place to put their school.”

But other parents urged the board to move forward to ease overcrowding for Oxnard students.

“When you have too many students in the classroom, it’s not fair to the teachers and it’s not fair to the students,” said parent Maria Skinner. “We need another school.”

Oxnard Elementary School District officials plan to take several measures to protect children and staff from pesticide dangers. They intend to establish a 100-foot buffer between the school and growing crops, train school staff on reporting pesticide risk problems to school officials, suspend outdoor student activities for 24 hours after any pesticide spraying, and urge the county agricultural commissioner’s office to restrict spraying to times when students are not at school.

Trustees said the new school is desperately needed to relieve campus overcrowding and to house a booming student population in Oxnard. Enrollment in the 19-school district has soared from 12,775 in 1992-93 to 15,500 this school year, and the district is currently 21% over capacity.

In addition to Juan Lagunas Soria school, the district has determined it will need to build three additional schools within five years, Supt. Richard Duarte said.

Finding sites for those schools has not been easy, Duarte said. The site must be at least 12 acres, near existing housing, a significant distance from railroad tracks, not beneath the flight path of an airport and not in the middle of an industrial park.

So Oxnard is turning to farmland to build schools, and local farmers are not happy. Though the recently passed Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources initiatives restrict building on farmland without voters’ approval, school districts are exempt from those limitations.

If the district cannot find sites for the new schools, it may have to dismantle class-size reduction efforts or hold double sessions, in which half of the students would attend classes in the morning and half in the afternoon.