Forum Tackles Building of Schools

Ventura County’s cities and school districts need to work much more closely in planning new campuses so that favored sites are not immediately shot down by opponents of development, participants said Wednesday in the county’s first-ever forum on school building.

And the consensus was that those talks should include growers, developers and activist groups to avoid political battles in a county that has some of the toughest growth control laws in the country.

The problem is that school boards and city councils are elected by the same voters, but they don’t always cooperate on the goals residents have set for them, said county schools chief Charles Weis.

Ventura County residents clearly want good schools and miles of untouched farmland, so it is up to bureaucrats to figure out how to make that work, Weis said.

“There are stumbling blocks,” he said. “But if you work together, you can define new standards for developing new schools.”

What those standards will be--and who will decide what they say--was debated by 50 officials representing cities, school districts, farmers, builders and advocacy groups gathered at the county superintendent of schools office in Camarillo.

A second meeting will be held Oct. 24 at the County Government Center in Ventura.

For three hours Wednesday, speakers laid out the problems, from cities and school districts not collaborating enough to state guidelines that get in the way of campus development.

They talked about successes, such as Glendale working closely with school officials to condemn blighted areas that are then redeveloped into school zones. And they came up with many suggested solutions, both practical and farfetched.

Existing malls and commercial buildings that are falling into disrepair could be rehabilitated, for instance, and find new life as schools. Construction of multistory schools and stacked, portable classrooms also was mentioned.