School configuration debate

COSTA MESA — Three dozen parents and teachers packed the Newport-Mesa Unified School District boardroom Tuesday afternoon, with some calling for a reconfiguration of schools in the Costa Mesa Zone while others urged the district to maintain the status quo.

The study session, held several hours before the board’s regular meeting, was an opportunity for the board to hear public opinions on the matter before voting on it next month.

Afterward, school board President Judy Franco said the district would hold a future session to get more input and recommended that administrators conduct a poll among students to determine whether they wanted to change the alignment of their schools.

Last March, more than 100 parents signed a petition asking the district to reconfigure grade levels at the Costa Mesa zone’s elementary schools.

Three of the zone’s elementary schools — College Park, Paularino and Sonora — stop after the third grade, with students moving to Davis Elementary School for the fourth through sixth grades.

During the 90-minute study session, comments were split roughly two ways.

Some in attendance — many of them teachers — praised the programs at Davis and said moving to a larger campus after the third grade benefited students.

Others, however, argued that a single elementary school would be less jarring to students, whom they said often felt displaced by the move.

“The kids are too young to be pulled away from an elementary school and sent to Davis,” said Sonora parent Christine Chapel, who compared the transition to moving to middle school. “They’re just too young.”

The petition last spring, led by Sonora parent Brian Valles, asked for all the schools to extend through the sixth grade. After running a demographic study of the neighborhood, the district came up with three possible scenarios for reconfiguring Costa Mesa schools.

In one scenario, College Park, Paularino and Sonora would extend to the fifth grade; in another, they would go through the sixth. Meanwhile, Davis would convert to a middle school, starting at either the sixth or seventh grade.

In the third scenario, the lower-grade schools would extend through the sixth grade while Davis became a magnet school for kindergarten through the eighth grade. According to the district, that system would be the least costly, although in a recent survey of parents, most preferred turning Davis into a middle school.

A number of faculty members argued that Davis eased students’ transition from elementary to secondary study. Fourth- and fifth-grade teacher Pam Brusic said the large number of classes allowed staffers to coordinate.

“Because we have so many classes at each grade level, we’ve developed a really effective method of measuring the needs of students,” she said.