Board doesn’t reconfigure schools

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District board decided Tuesday against shifting grade levels in Costa Mesa elementary schools this fall, a move that pleased some and disappointed others who wanted more consistent neighborhood sites.

At a special meeting of the school board, the members opted to maintain the status quo regarding the arrangement of schools in the Costa Mesa zone. In March, a group of parents, led by Brian Valles and Costa Mesa City Councilwoman Katrina Foley, brought a petition to the board asking that all the elementary schools in the zone be expanded to include the sixth grade.

Presently, three of the elementary sites in the zone ? College Park, Paularino and Sonora ? extend to the third grade, with Davis Elementary School serving students in fourth grade through sixth grade. Valles and other parents had proposed making Davis a middle school site and removing the seventh and eighth grades from Costa Mesa High School.

On Tuesday, after a two-and-a-half-hour public meeting, the board decided that it needed more time to outline a large shift in school populations. The board is studying the demographics in the Costa Mesa zone and may call for a reconfiguration in the future.

Nevertheless, supporters of the parents’ petition were saddened by the board’s decision.

“I’m disappointed,” said Valles, a Sonora parent, after the meeting. “I felt like we had a lot of momentum. The district was operating at a speed that was uncommon in a government body, and now we get the same bureaucracy.”

Foley said she wanted to keep children in her neighborhood at Sonora through the sixth grade to preserve a sense of community. Many families, she said, were moving their children to private schools to put them at a consistent site.

“It’s a mass exodus that we’re seeing within the last year, and that’s what scares me,” Foley told the board.

Others, however, voiced support for keeping the schools in their present form ? at least for the coming year. John Sanders, the principal of Paularino, said he sympathized with the petitioners’ concerns, but felt that cramming the work in over the summer would be too tight.

“I’m supportive of growing the community schools back,” he said. “I just thought the timeline was too short. To make a decision in June and get ready for the fall can’t guarantee what’s best for the kids.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, the board only considered adding the fourth grade at College Park, Paularino and Sonora for the upcoming year; a decision on expanding them to the sixth grade could come later. Each of the three schools has rooms that could be used for additional classes, though the space is limited.

Pam Brusic, a science teacher at Davis, spoke in favor of having students go to a new school for the fourth grade, saying that moving to a larger site prepared them for the transition to middle school.

“With 240 kids in your grade level, everyone can find a friend,” she said.

Davis parent Pam Baldwin said that her daughter, currently in the fifth grade, had flourished upon entering the school.

“As my third-grader was going to Davis, I was terrified,” she told the board. “I had not heard good things about Davis. Now I love it.”

Bob Kelly, the executive vice president for the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers, added that reconfiguring the schools could pose staffing difficulties. Fourth-grade classes, he said, have different schedules than primary grades, and forcing teachers to move to a new site could count as an involuntary transfer.

Board members’ opinions varied on the matter of restructuring schools over the summer. Tom Egan supported the change, noting that Newport Beach elementary schools went all the way to the sixth grade. Others, including Martha Fluor, pointed out that Costa Mesa schools were designed to accommodate their own neighborhoods.

“It has been by virtue of necessity that we have all these weird configurations,” Fluor said.