School Boundary Changes Opposed : Education: Parents of children in the Newhall School District voice their concerns about plans as officials consider how to redraw the district’s lines.

It’s a simple concept: Students living within a mile of a school should go there because it’s within walking distance.

Newhall School District Supt. J. Michael McGrath got plenty of applause when he explained this to a group of parents who don’t want planned school boundary changes to affect their children. After all, the parents say, many of them bought their houses because they were near a specific, award-winning school.

But a stunned silence greeted McGrath’s next statement. Five of the district’s six elementary schools are within a mile of each other, he said. Therefore, when a seventh school opens next fall west of the city limits, some students will be moved.

“Theoretically, you can attend any of these schools and it is a neighborhood school,” McGrath said.

Parents confronted McGrath with a number of issues during three public meetings last week--being forced to pay for busing, the distance their children have to walk and how redistricting might affect junior and senior high schools.

But most concerns revolved around a central issue.

“I don’t want my children sent somewhere else. We’re happy here,” said Linda Davis, one of about 20 Newhall Elementary School parents attending a Wednesday night meeting. She has two children enrolled at the school, which is one of two in Santa Clarita--and four in Los Angeles County--to win the National Blue Ribbon Award.

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Most of the voiced opposition to boundary changes comes from parents of the other Blue Ribbon school, Meadows Elementary School in Valencia, where 150 parents met with McGrath last Monday. Kenneth Tratner, one of the founders of Parents for Neighborhood Schools, said he moved five years ago to a house within half a mile of Meadows because of its reputation.

“I bought my house in that neighborhood because of the school,” he said in a telephone interview. “I could have bought my house a little less expensively (somewhere else), but I didn’t.”

Three more meetings are scheduled between Wednesday and Oct. 11, with four to six proposed boundary plans expected by November or December. The final boundaries are expected to be established by January or February, following more meetings with parents and school officials, McGrath said.

About 275 children of elementary school age live in Stevenson Ranch, a large housing development on the west side of the Golden State Freeway, which separates it from Santa Clarita. McGrath estimates 225 additional students will be transferred from existing schools to Stevenson Ranch Elementary when it opens next fall.

It is the first of several anticipated schools that will be outside the tightly grouped cluster of existing facilities. Existing schools were built when growth within Santa Clarita was heavy, but development is increasingly shifting to vast unincorporated areas within the district’s jurisdiction.

Solving the problem isn’t as simple as building new schools within those areas, McGrath explained.

For example, state law requires districts to try to achieve ethnic balance in schools, he said. Most of the district’s Latino students live in a concentrated area on the east side of the district, while most future development will occur on the west side.

In addition, most of the existing schools are full or have taken measures to prevent overcrowding, such as holding classes on a year-round schedule. The year-round enrollment has been as controversial among parents as the boundaries, and the district could eliminate the program by shifting students to the new school.

“There are many parents who would rather slit their throats than go multitrack,” Tratner said, adding that he isn’t one of them. Meadows is apparently in no danger of losing its traditional schedule, but he said multitrack is preferable to sending his sons to an unfamiliar school.

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District officials will use a list of 11 priorities when drawing the new boundaries, including reducing transportation costs by busing as few children as possible, distributing bilingual and other special education programs evenly between schools, and anticipating future growth.

The greatest changes will probably occur at Wiley Canyon and Old Orchard elementary schools, the schools closest to Stevenson Ranch. In addition, students being bused now will be the first sent to other schools further away.

But Sue Higgins, a parent at the Meadows meeting, said the district’s most important priority should be something that isn’t on its criteria list.

“I think one of the categories that needs to be on there is how this is going to affect our kids,” she said.