Two articles in the 2-18-10 Acorn Newspapers offer a contrast. In the T.O. Acorn, the headline reads, “Another charter school approved in Thousand Oaks.” The Ventura County Board of Education approved Bridges Charter School, which is based on an open classroom philosophy. The article reported that Conejo Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) would like the school to be located at the Horizon Hills School site, while Bridges founders want the school at the University Elementary School. It is scheduled to open next fall.
The approval means that students would leave CVUSD for a specialized curriculum and the figure in the article used as an example, was 150 students. The CVUSD Dep. Superintendent, Jeff Baarstad, said the district would loose $750,000 with the loss of that number of students.
On the growth side, was an article in The Acorn, titled “Out-of-town students enroll, Nearly a third of Oak Park’s registration is non-resident.” The article says that approximately 500 NEW out-of-district sutdents are expected next fall. These students would be in addition to the current number non-resident students, which is 1,100 out of a total enrollment of 3,815, or 29% of the total student count. Next year, the article says, it is expected that it will be a total of 4,050 students with 1,600 non-residents, or about 40%.
I guess the question for Oak Park residents and the OPUSD school board, is whether it is good for the community or not, to have this many out-of-district students attending Oak Park Schools? What are the traffic impacts, both during rush hour in the morning, at the end of school day various times in the afternoon, and for school events? Has that been studied? How about classroom and facility impacts? How about the impact of voters who approve bond measures for local schools, and then find out they are becoming less and less local?
Readers, what do you think about both these topics of public school loosing students to charter schools, and public schools growing because of an open enrollment policy? To read the T.O. Acorn story by Joann Groff, go to: http://www.toacorn.com/news/2010-02-18/Front_Page/Another_charter_school_approved_in_Thousand_Oaks.html, To read The Acorn story by Sophia Fischer, go to: http://www.theacorn.com/news/2010-02-18/Front_Page/Outoftown_students_enroll.html
Posted by Janna Orkney
eco-nerd // Feb 23, 2010 at 4:30 PM
Oak Park is growing its district out of bounds. According to edsource.org, OP is the only district in Ventura County that has imposed a parcel tax in the last 10 years(FYI, LVUSD in LA county has a parcel tax that is less than half of what OP voters approved with approx 3x the students).
If I had school aged children, I’d love to send them to a great school without paying the additional taxes. The question is how much is enough and when does OP rescind the invitation? In my eyes, 40% is a ridiculous number for a district with enrollment that is less than 4000. If they limited outside enrollment, costs for things such as an additional 147 parking spaces at the HS(acquired as part of a 29.4 million bond passed by voters) probably wouldn’t be necessary.
I think that it is time for this sleepy little district to join forces with one of the other ‘good’ adjacent districts and cut costs at the upper level.
If I had a say in where the extra $197 dollars per parcel was going, I’d probably send it to an inner city school that is in need of the basics. OP residents are funding extra space for extra students and cars that contribute to traffic and pollution. Heck, OP doesn’t even have a public transportation system outside of Dial a Ride.