Board to discuss future of sites

Huntington Beach City School District board members said this week they are ready to get down to business on what to do with four closed public school sites. With a study session scheduled for Tuesday to talk about four specific plans for what to do with all of the property, they said they hope to be able to move forward to a vote later in February.

None of the plans would sell all the land or jettison both the leases held by two private Christian schools on the closed Burke and Gisler Elementary School campuses, but plenty to talk about remains. One plan some favor would move one school and sell two sites, while another would keep both schools where they are and sell the LeBard Elementary site that now holds district offices.

Board members will have to come to some consensus to sell any site, as that action takes four out of five votes. Board President Celia Jaffe said Tuesday would be the time to talk long and hard about what’s on the table.

“This is the real meat of the decision-making,” she said. “It’s about considering the alternatives. I probably like some better than others, but I think being able to come together as a board to make an action is more important than just my personal preferences.”

Several members said telling Huntington Christian School and Brethren Christian Junior/Senior High School whether they could stay in one place was an important factor in making a quick decision.

“I’d like to get this resolved,” Trustee Brian Rechsteiner said. “It would be nice for those schools to know one way or the other what’s going to happen.”

Board member Rosemary Saylor sent out an e-mail recently asking for different voices from the core opponents of selling sites to turn out to this study session. The e-mail asked, “We need to hear also from more of our public school parents whose children are in our schools now and employees who work at our schools, all of whom are affected by facility and program issues.”

While some opponents of selling took issue with the e-mail’s characterization of them, Saylor defended the request.

“I felt there was an entire segment of the school population we simply weren’t hearing from,” Saylor said. “I wanted to make sure we heard from them, because any decisions we make aren’t just going to impact the areas around those school sites.”

The agenda, complete with a list of the proposals, will be listed at www.hbcsd.k12.ca.us/ by the end of Friday. The meeting will be at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at district headquarters, 20451 Craimer Lane.