Now that the Ventura County Board of Education has voted to approve Bridges Charter School, Conejo Valley Unified School District will decide on where to locate it for the 201011 school year.

They’ve proposed to lease out a portion of their Horizon Hills campus to Bridges. Parts of the campus have been used as an adult education/parent participation preschool for about 25 years and will continue to be used for this.

The school site hasn’t been upgraded to comply with the various laws that have been passed over the last 25 years. This will be very expensive in this time of fiscal crisis.

The school district has estimated that the cost to upgrade a portion of the campus for Bridges K-8 Charter School will cost up to $1 million. This strikes me and the community as an unreasonable use of funds when the closed University campus lies empty. There would only be minimal costs involved if Bridges occupied the University campus.

How can CVUSD consider converting the closed University campus, which was built as a middle school and was used for years as an elementary school campus, into a preschool, when the district’s own preschool at City Center is almost half empty?

The City Center Preschool was reopened by CVUSD in July 2009 with only 15 children. This was the same school site that was formerly known as Roots and Wings and had a waiting list over two years long for the 148 spaces.

In contrast, even eight months after the change in operators, CVUSD-managed City Center has empty classrooms, staff turnover, 45 percent of the spaces still available and is hemorrhaging cash.

If CVUSD’s current preschool is only 55 percent occupied, and if parents aren’t satisfied there then how can it expect to start up another preschool endeavor at the University Elementary campus? This strikes me as a huge waste of taxpayer money.

Join me in writing to CVUSD board members and asking them to do the most appropriate, least disruptive and fiscally prudent act—put Bridges at the University Elementary campus.
Jim Floyd
Thousand Oaks