Vote may allow parents to choose students' campuses

COSTA MESA — Some parents in Costa Mesa may get to choose where to send their fourth-graders next year, after the Newport-Mesa school board voted at a contentious meeting on Tuesday to give them that option.

Supt. Jeffrey Hubbard and Assistant Supt. of Elementary Education Susan Astarita had recommended that the board retain the grade configurations in central Costa Mesa, despite a yearlong campaign by parents to include more grade levels at College Park, Paularino and Sonora elementary schools. Some board members lobbied to change the configurations, saying that it was important during children's formative years that they stay at one school longer.

Ultimately, the board voted to add the option of fourth-grade classes at the three schools while giving parents a choice to send their children to Davis Elementary School instead. Davis serves the fourth through sixth grades. College Park, Paularino and Sonora offer classes up to third grade. The district — under the 5-2 decision Tuesday — will determine how many fourth-grade parents were interested in staying at the schools before assigning teachers there.

"Many of these parents have been very patient, and it's time to remove their need for patience," board member Walt Davenport said.

Early last year, more than 100 parents signed a petition asking the board to reconfigure their schools. The district's study team outlined three possibilities for reconfiguring what officials refer to as the Costa Mesa Zone.

In the first two, Davis would have become a middle school while the elementary schools would have had classes up to fifth or sixth grades and Costa Mesa High would have dropped middle school classes. In the third scenario, Davis would have become a magnet kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school and the other elementary schools would have had classes up to sixth grade.

Each of the scenarios, however, would cost the district upwards of $800,000. Board member Michael Collier and teachers union President Jim Rogers decried spending so much on reconfiguration while Newport-Mesa's teachers — the lowest-paid in any Orange County unified district — negotiated for higher pay.

"We've offended our teachers by saying we'd like to spend money on something other than their salaries," Collier said.

The board adopted none of the three scenarios Tuesday, but asked the district to review other configurations and bring a report back by December.