Decision looms on school closure Decision looms on school closure (March 05, 2004)

Recommendation will be made on March 25

By Julie O'Shea

With the Measure J win, Mountain View-Whisman Superintendent Jim Negri said Tuesday he no longer thinks the district will have to close a school this fall.

However, Negri said a school closure is not completely off the table for the future, adding that district officials will now have to look at long-term fixes.

Measure J will funnel $1.6 million annually into the district for the next five years.

Negri spent last week repeatedly telling worried parents that the school closure task force, set to hand down a recommendation later this month, hasn't put a target on any of the district's nine campuses.

Negri told parents, that the district remains committed to keeping class sizes small next year. If a school were to close in the future, he added, those teachers and students would be evenly distributed throughout the district.

Board trustees will hear from the school closure task force, which includes parents, teachers and administrators, on March 25.

Tuesday's victory for Measure J may have eased the school closure threat a bit. However, trustees have said that the $1.6-million tax's passage doesn't necessarily guarantee a campus won't have to be shut down this fall. Although state education dollars have been sparse, school officials remain hopeful that the passage of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $15-billion bond can keep their campuses open. Had it failed, the governor indicated that he might have had to tap into education funding to close the budget gap.

Given the uncertainty of the economy, Mountain View-Whisman began cautiously looking at the possibility of closing a school last November. District officials say such a move could fetch as much as $1 million a year if the closed campus is then rented out. The district's Whisman School campus is currently leased out at $640,000 a year.

Prior to Tuesday's election, finance chief Rebecca Wright warned that a school closure may be the only way the district will be able to balance its budget. The district is operating on a relatively slim $29.4 million budget this school year.

At two community meetings last week, Negri outlined a lengthy list of criteria the closure group is considering. The superintendent said the group wanted to get comments from the public before making a final decision.

The criteria being considered for a possible school closure include: special school programs, such as Castro's language immersion program and Slater's parent participation program; special state funds like Title I; rental potential; site capacity; academic achievement; cultural and ethnic balance; health and safety issues; balanced attendance concerns; historical issues and parent and teacher satisfaction.

News that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discovered trace amounts of a cancer-causing solvent in the outside air at Slater Elementary won't factor into the closure decision, Negri said. The EPA has stated the toxin does not pose an immediate or short-term health risk.

Parents who came to the Feb. 25 meeting worried that a school closure could impact their residential property value and added that many families choose to move into this area in order to attend the schools in the Mountain View-Whisman district.

If a school were to shut down, some said they fear parents could retaliate by yanking their children out of the district.

"Any closure is going to be disruptive to some degree," Negri said, adding "we are trying not to disrupt educational programs."

E-mail Julie O'Shea at joshea@mv-voice.com

E-mail a friend a link to this story.