COSTA MESA : Parent Group Upset by School Transfers

A Paularino Elementary School group of parent plans to denounce the school district’s proposal to transfer 71 special education students, many of them to the Paularino campus.

Members of the group said they will voice their opposition to the plan at tonight’s board meeting of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

Diane McTeigue, who has two sons at Paularino, said parents are upset because the proposed move would decrease enrollment by only four special education students.

“As a parent, why would you want to uproot anybody’s kids if you dont have to,” said McTeigue. “Why would we want to transfer our own special education kids and get new kids in there?”

Paularino Principal Larry Alford said the school’s five classes of students with severe disorders of language would move to Killybrooke Elementary School. Paularino then would pick up three classes of students with learning handicaps from Sonora Elementary School.

The moves would drop Paularino’s special education enrollment by only four students, while freeing up two classrooms for as many as 60 mainstream students.

Offered earlier this month to help ease overcrowding in the district, the proposal does call for adding additional classrooms at Killybrooke and College Park elementary schools, but it would not result in large numbers of students shifting between schools.

District officials said the special education students already are bused throughout the district so the change would not be as traumatic as other proposals.

But McTeigue said that in order to help push the plan through, the board is playing down the number of special education students who will be concentrated at one school and the severity of their disorders.

In addition to moving special education students, six classrooms would be added to Killybrooke Elementary School and one would be added to College Park Elementary.

The board began looking at options last month to ease overcrowding in the Costa Mesa zone because the district’s schools are expected to reach capacity by the 1995-96 school year.

Trustees say they will make a decision March 12.