District won’t shift attendance areas

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District won’t shift attendance areas

in Corona del Mar and Newport Coast, the school board decided Tuesday

in a unanimous vote that ended months of dispute.

A year ago, Newport-Mesa began a demographic study of the Corona

del Mar Zone’s elementary schools, citing dwindling attendance at

Eastbluff Elementary School and a predicted overcrowding at Newport

Coast Elementary School. The district originally proposed moving

neighborhoods out of Newport Coast Elementary’s attendance area and

diverting children to other campuses.

After the district ran a check on students who were enrolled at

Newport Coast Elementary, however, it found that 70 of them lived

outside the school’s attendance boundaries and moved them to their

neighborhood schools. As a result, the plan that the board passed

Tuesday included no shifting of existing neighborhoods.

“It’s very, very good not to have to change boundaries and do

things of that type,” said board member David Brooks. “That’s why we

took that long and had a dialogue with people. It just makes it

easier for the entire district.”

Parents, many of whom had protested the attendance shifts,

expressed relief with the final solution.

“I’m happy about it because as a parent of a Lincoln child, I

wanted the community to really stay together and not be split apart,”

said former Lincoln PTA president Elizabeth Kennedy. “We’ve worked

really hard to build a cohesive school community and it would be a

shame to see that change right now.”

In the end, the district did make one change in Newport Coast,

moving children in the new housing development in Crystal Cove to

Harbor View Elementary School. No families live in the neighborhood,

and assistant superintendent of elementary education Susan Astarita

said future home buyers would be informed of their local school.

The board approved four recommendations for the Corona del Mar

Zone, some of them projects that the district has already begun to

implement. One plan is to develop a science and technology program at

Eastbluff, which has already purchased laptops for its older students

and will furnish a science classroom later this year.

“We’re going to be the lucky recipients of a fantastic facility

that none of the schools on our side of the bay will have,” said

Eastbluff parent Lauren Young. The board also agreed to designate

several neighborhoods in the Lincoln and Mariners elementary areas as

priority zones to transfer to Eastbluff. More than 40 children

transferred to Eastbluff this summer after Newport-Mesa advertised

the school on its website, and the school responded by hiring two new

teachers and adding two kindergarten classes.

The fourth recommendation is to study the possibility of adding

seventh- and eighth-grade classes at one of the area’s elementary

sites -- most likely Lincoln, which used to be a middle school and

has the largest campus in the zone. Adding the grade levels would

provide an alternative to the middle school at Corona del Mar High

School.

* MICHAEL MILLER covers education. He may be reached at (714)

966-4617 or by e-mail at o7michael.miller@latimes.comf7.