School district looks to resolve transfer problems

Angelique Flores

HUNTINGTON BEACH -- After several years of problems with transfers

into Sowers Middle School, the Huntington Beach City School District

continues to look at adopting a policy to put the issue to rest.

At Tuesday’s meeting, district staff presented the Board of Trustees

with a report on open enrollment at Sowers, which for years has upset

parents. Residents, mostly from the Landmark tract between Adams and

Yorktown avenues and Newland and Magnolia streets, apply for transfers to

Sowers each year. These parents didn’t want to separate their children

from friends who will attend Sowers next year. Some also had concerns

about children having to cross Beach Boulevard to get to Dwyer Middle

School.

“It puts an added anxiety on parents,” said John Conniff, the

district’s director of administrative services.

So far, district officials said they have been able to accommodate

students each year the problem has arisen. But officials want to adopt a

formal policy to remedy the issue.

The board showed interest in the staff’s recommendation to continue

the current open enrollment process with one change. Starting with the

2001-2002 school year, students who have intradistrict transfers to

attend elementary schools that feed into Sowers should be allowed to

continue onto Sowers without having to go through the open enrollment

process again.

This change would impact only 13 children who are on open enrollment

transfers within the district at the present time.

“That’s the best permanent solution,” Trustee Robert Mann said.

Staff members looked at options that included changing the boundaries

of specific geographic areas, giving students in specific areas the

option of enrolling into either Dwyer or Sowers and allowing students who

have already been accepted into one of Sowers’ feeder elementary schools

through open enrollment the ability to automatically continue onto Sowers

without having to go through the open enrollment process again.

“We’ve had several values come into conflict,” Conniff said about the

open enrollment policy at Sowers.

While district officials support the choice of attendance among its

district schools, they also want to make sure each site is efficiently

used without any imbalances of enrollment that could result in

overcrowding.

The district will still limit the number of students who enroll at

Sowers to the capacity of the school, but may start doing so at the

elementary schools before it becomes a problem at the middle school

level.

Enrollment numbers indicate that the middle schools should have their

highest enrollment over the next three years. It is likely that both

middle schools will have enrollment that strains their current student

capacity. However, those figures should decrease below the present

enrollment after those three years.

Enrollment projections for next year at Sowers show that there will be

room to accept this year’s open enrollment transfer requests. Last year,

the district had a waiting list of 36 and was able to accept all those

students at Sowers. Parents will apply at the end of the month for

transfers.

The matter will brought to the board at the next meeting on March 20,

but will not be brought for action for at least another month.