Trustees OK Broad Reorganization Plan : Schools: Ocean View School District board approves plan despite protests. Busing is expected to increase fivefold.

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  Seeking to solve problems of slumping enrollment and widening racial segregation, the board of the Ocean View School District on Tuesday unanimously approved a controversial redistricting plan that will close two elementary schools and convert four others to middle schools.

The plan, expected to expand busing in the district fivefold, could mean that up to a quarter of the district’s 8,600 students will be attending different schools in September, 1992. Many of the 300 parents and educators who packed a high school gymnasium for the board meeting Tuesday denounced it as too costly and argued that it will divide neighborhoods and dismantle strong academic programs.

“Configuration of schools is not what makes great schools,” one parent, Norman Michaud, told the board. “I hope the schools that are now great will continue to be great.”

Among the provisions of the reorganization is a sweeping desegregation plan that will close Crest View School and add special programs to the largely Latino Oak View school in an effort to attract more Anglo students and balance racially segregated student populations in the district.

With Tuesday night’s approval, Ocean View in September, 1992, will become the county’s last kindergarten-through-eighth-grade district to introduce middle schools. The district currently has six K-8 schools and 11 K-6 sites.

Opponents of the plan who gathered in the gymnasium of Ocean View High School on Tuesday outnumbered supporters by about 4 to 1. Opponents applauded loudly at speakers who lined up to denounce the plan and waved placards reading “S.O.S.--Save Our Schools,” but filed out dejectedly after the plan was approved shortly before 10 p.m.

Officials acknowledge the district’s existing structure has been successful. But they say that the middle-schools alignment--which will concentrate more students at each of Ocean View’s remaining schools--is warranted to make better use of its staff, programs and facilities, in the wake of plummeting enrollment. Between 1972 and 1989, district enrollment plunged from 14,200 to 8,400.

Under the plan, the district’s smallest school, Haven View, will be closed. Four K-8 schools--Marine View, Mesa View, Spring View and Vista View--will be converted into middle schools serving sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders. Crest View School will close under the desegregation element of the proposal, approved by the Board of Trustees on May 15 after 15 months of study and debate.

The proposal also will sharply reduce attendance boundaries at Oak View Elementary School. Two magnet programs aimed at attracting more Anglo students will be established, with more than half of the school’s 690 students--89% of whom are ethnic minorities--moving to neighboring schools to make room for the new students.

The Oak View plan has been described as inherently discriminatory by district officials because it will favor Anglo students who wish to enroll in the magnet program. But it has gained widespread support among Latino and Vietnamese parents, who say the plan will achieve integration in the long run.

But the desegregation plan drew fire from some at the meeting. One parent, Ed Beuel, criticized it as “unnecessary.”

“There is not a problem with racial imbalance in this district,” Beuel told the board. “The people living in the Oak View area live there by choice. That is segregation by choice, not by discrimination. By busing great numbers of students across town and making them go to school with students with whom they have nothing in common, you are doing a great disservice to us by this unnecessary plan.”

Oak View would be among 11 remaining schools that would become K-5 elementary schools. District officials estimate the new boundary alignments would force about one-fourth of Ocean View’s 8,600 students to change schools after the 1991-92 school year.

In all, the district, which now buses 600 students daily--not including special education students--would begin busing 3,000 students each day, officials estimate. Class starting times would be staggered at the schools to adjust to the expanded busing schedule.

The need for increased busing also drew fire from opponents.

Liz O’Connor, parent of a Marine View School kindergartner, said: “Why is she being bused . . . 2 miles away? Why is she being separated frm 85% of her classmates? I recognize that change is necessary, but the radical change proposed is too costly.”

Officials project the district will spend as much as $2.5 million to buy 10 buses, add portable classrooms and make other building modifications to accommodate expanded student populations. The district expects to recoup about $140,000 from state desegregation funds and pay the rest of the start-up costs from the district’s $7.1-million special reserve account, Supt. Monte McMurray said.

Staffing changes are estimated to cost an additional $503,000 each year. Those costs, however, are expected to be offset by money saved from the two school closures, McMurray said.