School district makes changes to closure criteria
By Joann Groff joann@theacorn.com

After more than four hours of testimony from parents, Conejo Valley Unified School District trustees took some big steps backward in the school closure process, voting to alter the original criteria to consider diversity and children with special needs.

Maple and Ladera elementary schools- both high on the list of good closure candidates in the original round- won't be considered because of their autism programs.

"Children with autism don't tend to take change well," said Donald Moore, who has an autistic daughter at Ladera. "It would be horrendous for my daughter. To disrupt that program would be detrimental."

Delania Eaton, whose autistic son is a third-grader at Maple, agreed. "We've worked so hard for him to fit in, in the school community," Eaton said. "He's finally comfortable enough to be in the school play. To go somewhere else right now is going to be huge for him. He needs this comfort right now."

Janet Cosaro, assistant superintendent of instructional services, agreed with the comments and told the board that the early-intervention autism programs at Maple and Ladera took years to establish.

"We have a lot of trained teachers and specialists that, of course, could move, but it would be one of the more difficult moves," Cosaro said. "When you're looking at (special needs) classes, it's very difficult to replicate that culture on campus. You have to spend time building that."

The board decided to pull Maple and Ladera, and to work consideration of special needs children into the primary criteria. They voted unanimously to rescore the other 18 elementary schools with the following altered criteria:

•The first primary criteria will consider the number of all displaced students, not just resident students, including Englishlanguage learners, school-choice kids and children who attend special day classes.

•The second and third criteria- how easily adjacent schools can absorb displaced students and the distance those students would have to travel to their new school- will remain the same.

•The fourth criteria, which looked at each school's facilities, has been thrown out.

After a new set of candidates emerge, they will judged on how many special day classes will be displaced and how the closure could better help "balance the diversity" in the district.

Jeff Baarstad, deputy superintendent of business services, who's headed up the process with the Facilities Goals Committee, was concerned that new criteria and new candidates would bring with it a slew of other parents with different concerns.

"We had study sessions and meetings, and no one was there, no one came out," Baarstad said. "It's human nature. It becomes real when it becomes your school. . . . I'm concerned we're going to go back and do this all again and you're not going to get the answers you want."

The meeting drew more than 500 parents and community members, spilling out of the Thousand Oaks High School Performing Arts Center. The majority of parents were from Maple, Aspen and Park Oaks, which were considered good school closure candidates after the first scoring, and Manzanita, whose supporters came out to defend the school after shots were taken at the school's teachers and students.

"I'm sorry to say that there have been a few people who ejected into this process some negative comments," said Superintendent Mario Contini. "They've created a degree of disharmony, hurt feelings . . . and disenfranchisement. As far as our lower-ranking schools, most other schools in California envy their success considering all the challenges they've had. . . . We should think of them as our heroes."

Susan Falk, president of the Unified Association of Conejo Teachers, also came to Manzanita's defense. "We won't stand by and listen to people denigrating teachers at Manzanita," Falk said. "They are just as outstanding and hardworking as any other teachers. . . . You shouldn't be tearing down some other school to try and keep yours open."

Baarstad said his team will rescore the schools and come back with new recommendations at the March 4 meeting.