School Site Foes Tour Alternatives

In a last-ditch effort to get district officials to drop their preferred site for the future Juan Soria Elementary School, Ventura County Supervisor John Flynn on Wednesday took opponents on a tour of four alternative locations.

With reporters in tow, Flynn’s dozen-member group traveled from the proposed 14-acre site on Emerson Avenue to other potential south Oxnard locations: at Durley Park, Beck Park, Driffill Elementary and the intersection of Vineyard Avenue and Ventura Road.

Oxnard Elementary School District Supt. Richard Duarte said Wednesday that he still favors the Emerson site and thinks critics are overstating concerns. “Right now we’re not looking for an alternative,” he said. “We’re looking for additional sites.”

Three of the four sites Flynn’s group is promoting are among 22 that school officials are considering for additional schools, Duarte said.

The Emerson site has been controversial from the start.

Slow-growth activists don’t like the site because it is on agricultural land that was supposed to be protected from development with the passage of Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources laws in 1998. Schools are exempt from SOAR, but critics say such construction violates the spirit of the law.

Environmentalists don’t like the site because it is adjacent to farmland where pesticides that could harm schoolchildren are sprayed. And nearby farmers don’t like the site because they fear that pesticide concerns would encroach on their ability to farm.

Leticia Soria, daughter of the late Latino activist for whom the district’s next school will be named, traveled from San Luis Obispo County to join Flynn’s effort. “I wouldn’t want my children here,” she said as she surveyed the Emerson Avenue site. “I know my father would be really upset.”

She said she had been briefed on environmental concerns by project opponents.

Others in the group included former school board trustee Jean Harris, former Oxnard councilwoman Jane Tolmach, city Planning Commissioner Edward Castillo and lawyer Fred Rosenmund, who owns farmland nearby.

Duarte said he hopes to wrap up negotiations with the owners of the Emerson site by mid-February and bring an offer to the district’s board of trustees for a vote. He would not discuss the asking price.

He conceded, however, that Flynn’s group could have a chilling effect on trustees. “Because this is so politically charged, the board still has to make a decision on whether they want to build a school there,” he said. “They haven’t decided that yet.”

But Harris, one of the Emerson opponents, said that district officials have refused to consider other sites for years.

“We feel like every time we suggest a site, it’s a skeet shoot,” she said. “Their complete focus is on that one site. We really have not been able to figure it out. I think their thinking is that nice flat farmland is the easiest way.”

Duarte said it’s a matter of the district’s needs.

“It meets our requirements for a school of that size, 800 to 1,000 children,” he said. “We need the space. And it doesn’t call for displacing businesses or anything like that.”

As far as environmental concerns, Duarte said appropriate limits on spraying would be put in place to keep children safe. He acknowledged that building the school at the Emerson site goes against some slow-growth principles but said it’s more important to get a school within two years, given projections for classroom overcrowding. Planning at this site is the furthest along, he said.

“Children take priority over agricultural land,” he said. “I’m not saying we want to encourage sprawl, but when it comes to priorities, what is our priority? I know what mine is--it’s the children of Oxnard.”

Flynn said his group will turn up the heat in coming weeks--and will consider legal action if trustees agree to build there. “We hope the school district changes its mind,” he said. “We want them to hear us.”