Parents gather to decry school merge

Parents and students at Orange Coast Middle College High School were close to unanimous in their response to the sudden news that the school will be merged into Early College High School in September 2010: shock, not to mention some anger.

Most parents and students only heard about the campus’ closure in the newspaper, said parent Chris Ludlow.

“I feel really betrayed by this whole thing,” she said. “I feel like you pulled the rug out from under us. You did it really, really fast. Apparently you guys have been working on this for a long, long, long, long, time, and in the space of 24 hours you just dropped the bomb on us.”

Ludlow, along with dozens of other parents and students of Middle College High School, were gathered Thursday night at an informational session where their school principal and a top district official explained that the merger was a done deal.

“I’m never going to ask you to agree with me, but I want you to see why we’re making this decision,” said Chuck Hinman, the district’s assistant superintendent of educational services for secondary schools.

The two schools had too similar a mission and were competing with each other, Hinman said. At the same time, the statewide budget crisis this year forced the district to cut $8 million from own upcoming budget, he added.

Middle College High School was founded more than a decade ago as a way to let high school-aged teens take Orange Coast College classes alongside their normal course work; now, it serves fewer than 100 juniors and seniors, but will not admit new juniors next year.

Early College High School, on the other hand, was founded three years ago, when grant money was available; it has students begin in ninth grade, take Coastline Community College classes, and will ultimately have them finish after five years with a high school diploma and an associate degree. The new school would likely offer another option closer to the Middle College experience in the future, Hinman said.

But while the schools may sound similar, parents and students at the school lamented the end of a culture. Because the Middle College students will graduate where they started, and the two schools are so different, they said it looked a lot more like a closure than a merger to them.

“The big thing here is we are a family,” said Christa Slack, a Middle College senior, breaking into tears. “I love every student here so much. This new school’s just so big. How are you expecting it to be a family if it’s so big?”

Principal Bob Nanney implored students and parents not to get too angry or to try to fight the decision, but to do their best to make the next year a good one for the school’s seniors.

“Stay involved with me, Dr. Hinman, and the people at school district,” he said. “Let’s make it the best we can make it. Those of you who are students and parents here, if you hear about students who want to leave, we may need to re-sell them on this place.”

MICHAEL ALEXANDER may be reached at (714) 966-4618 or at michael.alexander@latimes.com.