Board Votes to Close 2 Peninsula High Schools : Education: Miraleste and Palos Verdes high schools will close by next fall, and all students will attend Rolling Hills High. The closed campuses will be converted to intermediate schools.

Faced with too few students and mounting money problems, Palos Verdes Peninsula school board members have voted to consolidate the district’s three high schools into one large campus by next fall.

The board’s vote late Tuesday night follows years of bitter wrangling between district officials and a group of parents seeking to keep Miraleste High School on the east side of the peninsula open. The battle has polarized parents living throughout the district.

Under the board’s plan, the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District will close both Miraleste and Palos Verdes high schools and reassign the students to Rolling Hills High School. That campus, which will be renamed and given new school colors, will be expanded with portable classrooms to accommodate an estimated 3,000 ninth- through 12th-graders.

The plan also calls for the two closed high schools to be converted into intermediate schools. The district’s two existing intermediate schools, which are smaller than the high school campuses, will be shut down. None of the district’s elementary schools will be closed.

“What it means for the district emotionally is a painful reorganization,” board member Jeffrey Younggren said Wednesday. “But if the community can get behind it . . . we can really have a great high school.”

Board members said the plan should result in a $2.3-million savings for the 9,000-student district, which had projected a $2.6-million deficit next year unless some campuses were closed. With little money in reserves, officials said the school district could have faced insolvency if they had not consolidated campuses.

The savings will come largely through the elimination of a number of administrative, clerical and custodial positions. The precise number was not available.

More than 125 Miraleste students gathered outside the school board’s meeting room on Tuesday night to peacefully protest the plan to close their school. Many squeezed into the room when board members convened to vote on the proposal.

“I’m really upset,” Jack Woodruff, a junior at Miraleste, said as he stood outside. “We were expecting it, but we didn’t know when.”

Other students said they prefer attending a smaller high school than the one proposed, even though they understand the district’s desire to slash costs as enrollment has dropped.

“I just don’t want to go to a school with 3,000 students,” sophomore Damen Sanders said.

Seven elementary and intermediate schools have been closed in recent years as the number of students districtwide has declined to about half the number enrolled 17 years ago.

About 570 ninth- through 12th-graders attend Miraleste, less than half the number that attend the district’s other two high schools, which each have about 1,200 students enrolled.

On Wednesday morning, 300 Miraleste students staged an orderly pep rally on campus opposing the closure.

However, principals at both Miraleste and Palos Verdes high schools, as well as administrators assigned elsewhere, said they support the board’s action, even though some may lose their jobs.

“Consolidation was an absolute necessity,” Miraleste Principal Andy Seymour said. He said the school’s impending closure was discussed with students Wednesday during an assembly.

“All of the administrators talked about this and we feel so strongly consolidation had to occur even if it meant some of us had to move on,” said Pam Lopez, an elementary school principal and president of the Palos Verdes Administrators Assn.

Joanne Shultz, a PTA officer at Palos Verdes High School who has two children enrolled in the school, said she was glad the board had finally arrived at a consolidation plan. With only one high school, the district may be able to offer students a wider variety of classes than it presently does, she said.

“Education is more important than convenience,” Shultz said.

Board members said they hope that by creating one, centrally located high school on the peninsula, the bitter legal battle between the district and a group of parents fighting to keep Miraleste open will now end.

Three years ago, board members voted to close Miraleste because of declining enrollment but were blocked when the parents filed a lawsuit to halt the action. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that the school must remain open until an environmental impact report on school closures districtwide is prepared.

That report was completed by board members Tuesday night but still must be approved by a judge before the district moves ahead with its consolidation plan.

“I think it will bring the community back together because everyone is going to give up something,” school board President Jack Bagdasar said of the consolidation plan.

Barry Hildebrand, spokesman for the parents who filed the lawsuit, said parents will meet in several days to determine whether to pursue their fight to keep Miraleste open.

“I think everybody is tired and wants to see a resolution, but I don’t think we are ready to roll over,” Hildebrand said.

Hildebrand said that by creating one large high school, the district will create overcrowded conditions. That, in turn, could lead some parents to enroll their children in private schools, and the district would lose even more students.

“I think it is going to be self-defeating,” he said.

District officials said more than a dozen portable classrooms will have to be added to the Rolling Hills High School site, and student parking will have to be expanded. Some classes will have to start earlier than others so students do not all arrive and leave at the same time, they said.

At the peak of the district’s enrollment in the ‘70s, about 2,800 students attended the school.

Under the board’s plan, both Ridgecrest and Malaga Cove intermediate schools will be closed and the students transferred to the former high school campuses.

Students residing on the east side of Hawthorne Boulevard, the main road running through the four peninsula cities, will go to the Miraleste campus, while those living west of Hawthorne will be assigned to Palos Verdes.

Although the plan calls for all eight of the district’s elementary schools to remain open, sixth-graders at Mira Catalina and Rancho Vista will be reassigned to the Miraleste school.

PENINSULA SCHOOL DISTRICT CONSOLIDATION

The Palos Verdes Peninsula school board has decided to consolidate the district’s three high schools into one large campus by next fall, and close two intermediate schools. Here are details of the plan.

Current schools 1991-92 school sites HIGH SCHOOLS Miraleste High (Grades 7-12) Rolling Hills (9-12) Palos Verdes High (9-12) Rolling Hills High (9-12) INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLS Malaga Cove Intermediate (6-8) Grade 6-8 students living east Ridgecrest Intermediate (6-8) of Hawthorne Blvd. will go to Miraleste. Grade 6-8 students living west of Haw- thorne Blvd. will go to Palos Verdes. ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS Six K-5 elementary schools No change Mira Catalina Elementary (K-6) Sixth-graders reassigned to Miraleste Rancho Vista Elementary (K-6)

Rancho del Mar continuation high school will retain its site.