Parents Jam Board Room to Hear Decision on Attendance

Dozens of residents packed the board room of Capistrano Unified School District on Monday to hear the decision on new attendance boundaries, but many left as the meeting continued into the night with trustees first addressing a number of other issues on a long meeting agenda.

Many parents have said they do not want their children to change schools, citing financial, emotional and social investments made in their current campuses. They also have expressed concern about how the change would affect students’ academic performance.

New attendance boundaries have been in the works since last fall, when three committees of parents and school staff members began drawing up a preliminary plan for four new campuses.

Don Juan Avila Elementary and Middle schools will open with a total of 1,450 students on a single campus in Aliso Viejo near Oak Grove Elementary. Tijeras Creek Elementary will open in Rancho Santa Margarita, with enrollment projected at 671 students, and Kinoshita Elementary will open in San Juan Capistrano with 665 students.

Suggestions were submitted to a districtwide panel, which held public hearings on the options for each school area affected.

The hearings also addressed the issue of changing the ethnic balance at two San Juan Capistrano campuses: San Juan Elementary, which is 98% Latino, and Del Obispo Elementary, where more than two-thirds of the students are white.

District officials are wrestling with 21 options for redistributing thousands of students in Aliso Viejo, Laguna Niguel, Coto de Caza, Rancho Santa Margarita, Las Flores, Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente.

Supt. James A. Fleming has proposed that current students and their younger siblings be allowed to stay on or enroll at their present campuses.

Fleming’s recommendation to the board was that most of Tijeras Creek’s students be taken from Wagon Wheel Elementary in Coto de Caza. For Don Juan Avila, he proposed transferring about 300 students from Oak Grove Elementary and 178 from Wood Canyon Elementary, both in Aliso Viejo.

He proposed drawing most of Kinoshita Elementary’s enrollment from San Juan Elementary and adding about 150 students from Del Obispo.

Don Juan Avila would draw from Aliso Viejo Middle School, making space for transfers to the latter campus from Niguel Hills Middle School in Laguna Niguel.