Protests fail to stop school closures

At Tuesday night's meeting, after hearing hours of mixed input from parents, the Conejo Valley Unified School District Board of Education decided to uphold a March decision to close University and Meadows elementary schools.

The vote was 32, with trustees Tim Stephens and Michael Dunn opposing the closures.

"I think closing schools and cutting the budget like this are obviously both going to be disastrous to the district," said Stephens, who called for marketing the district with brochures, advertisements and interviews with exiting parents. "I think we can slow this trend in declining enrollment; we don't do enough to market ourselves."

Earlier this month the board was forced to cut about $4.5 million from its budget because of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's education cuts and declining enrollment, which is expected to continue.

The board then found an additional $1.4 million in possible cutbacks, which, if passed, would save the schools. The cuts included increasing class sizes in sixth- through 12th-grades and the removal of freshman sport stipends, which would mean more parent commitment or the deletion of certain athletic programs all together.

"It's already such a thin budget," said parent Jan Fong. "I understand how hard it is to change schools and make new friends. But the programs and the quality of programs are what make it possible to create an environment where children can reach their highest ability. They are going through their teenage years (in middle and high school). They need more counselors and more support at this time."

Roxanne Brown, a Westlake High School parent who's on the school site council, agreed.

"I've seen how they've juggled and stretched to make ends meet at the high schools," Brown said. "I feel for you whose schools (are closing), but we can't afford to cut any more."

More than 300 parents and teachers packed into the performing arts center at Newbury Park High School for Tuesday night's board meeting. The auditorium was literally split down the middle, about half of the attendees supporting Meadows or donning blue University T-shirts, and the other half pushing for the closures to avoid deeper cuts, especially in secondary education.

"How thin can we spread this butter over the bread?" asked Ron Meyer. "We need to find ways to survive this. We're ready to close- and that's what needs to happen."

Kathleen Woodward called elimination of sports "unAmerican," and several parents agreed at the podium. Representatives from various sport booster clubs told how much they already paid and made in fundraisers.

Several University and Meadows parents criticized high school parents for suddenly attending a meeting on the issue, despite the fact they'd been fighting for their schools since January.

The board also took shots for making residents so divisive.

"This process has been a long, bad rollercoaster," said parent Cathy Warner. "You decided to close schools and then got us excited with new cuts. Now you've pitted secondary schools against us. It's not our fault. This should be a districtwide problem, not a school-to-school battle."

Board member Pat Phelps defended herself and her team.

"It's not the board that's been divisive," Phelps said. "It's the people who have fought out these issues."

More than 60 speakers came to the podium and their opinions were fairly evenly split. But more than 90 written statements were submitted in favor of closing the schools, while only about 10 were for saving them.

Board member Dolores Didio, along with Phelps and board president Dorothy Beaubien, voted to close the schools.

"We have declining enrollment, and it's not going to change overnight," Didio said. "We are going to have more and more elementary schools with less than 300 students. In my opinion we can operate 18 elementary schools (instead of 20) and give everybody a quality education."

The board then voted to shutter Meadows and University and take school closure off the table for three years.