ORANGE : Plan to Move School Offices Causes Flap

After an emotional public hearing lasting nearly two hours, board members of the Orange Unified School District last week tabled a proposal to relocate the district offices to the site of the former Katella Elementary School.

The district must move from its current downtown headquarters at 370 N. Glassell St. because the building does not meet earthquake safety standards. District officials say that they have looked at alternative sites for more than a year and that Katella is the most cost-effective option.

Parents say they want Katella Elementary, closed in 1983 because of declining enrollment, to be reopened as a neighborhood school. Residents said they fear that moving the district offices to Katella could generate traffic problems from the district’s 130 employees and their visitors.

Despite pledges of cooperation from both sides, neighbors and officials batted the issue back and forth without compromise Thursday night.

“I’m very upset that you don’t seem to be hearing my community’s concerns,” neighborhood resident Kay McPherson told the board. “They are really not ready to welcome you into the Katella school community.”

Board member Nancy Moore, who was principal of Katella when it closed, pleaded with the parents of her former students for their cooperation.

“You know that as much as I love that community, that having the district (office) there is a viable alternative,” Moore said. “You’ve got to work with us in finding a viable use for that school site, and if it’s as a district office, then you’ve got to give us your support in that.”

The need to move district employees from the unsafe building is urgent, officials said.

“If you were in our seats and you knew that you were personally . . . responsible for the lives of the people in this building, then you would understand the reasons for expediting this decision,” board president Alan Irish told the crowd of about 50 parents and neighbors.

Hazel Stover, president of the Orange Unified teacher’s union, who lives four blocks from Katella Elementary, said the district “absolutely must move those offices.”

Employees “are in a building that is not safe,” said Stover, who represents about 24 employees who work at the district headquarters. “It is in a deteriorating condition because of poor maintenance and was damaged in the Whittier quake (of 1987) among others. . . . It’s an accident waiting to happen.”

The board “needs to select a facility that meets the needs of the district and gets the people out of that building,” Stover continued. “If that means Katella, then that’s the way it has to be.”

The district will hold another community meeting on the matter on June 18 at Katella Elementary at 7 p.m.