Ocean View School District still seeks solutions as possible school closures loom

The same week the Ocean View School District held its first day of school, its Board of Trustees held a special meeting Thursday night to discuss the future of some of those campuses.

Only a few weeks remain before Oct. 24, when a Superintendent’s Schools Task Force is expected to make a recommendation to the board on the possible closure of Circle View, Village View and Golden View elementary schools and repurposing of Spring View Middle School.

The task force — comprising nearly 40 school site, community and union representatives — was formed last spring when the district pumped the brakes on possible school closures for this school year.

It has had eight meetings since April. Three more are on the docket, set for next Wednesday, Oct. 4 and Oct. 18.

Thursday’s special board meeting was led primarily by Assistant Supt. Keith Farrow and Dr. Joe Farley, a former Orange County superintendent who is facilitating the task force meetings. It was intended for the Board of Trustees to study data that has been presented to the task force regarding declining enrollment.

Board President Patricia Singer said during the meeting that she was not going to be giving any thoughts — at least not yet — because it would distract from the intent of the task force.

“I’m going to continue to listen to the task force, I’m going to continue to listen to the staff,” Singer said. “I’m not going to give you ideas or suggestions, and believe me, as a real estate agent for over 20 years, I have plenty of ideas. But I’m going to wait for the task force to start looking at creative ideas, whether it’s land leasing, selling property, closing schools, not closing schools ... I’ve always said everything should be on the table.”

Board Vice-President Gina Clayton-Tarvin has said multiple times that she will vote no on any school closures.

Crystal Mayer, a parent at Circle View, makes public comments during Thursday’s special meeting.

(Matt Szabo)

Still, the numbers seem dire. During the presentation, Farrow showed that Ocean View School District went from 9,418 students in 2012-13 to 6,809 students a decade later. That trend is expected to continue, he said, as a study by Davis Demographics projects the district’s enrollment to be just 5,563 by 2030.

Enrollment is dropping throughout California as the birth rate declines, with California kindergarten-through-12th-grade enrollment hitting a 20-year low of about 5.8 million students in 2021, down 6.23 million from 2016 numbers.

Several parents giving public comments at the meeting expressed frustration. One of them, Crystal Mayer, is a Circle View parent who has remained very involved in the process.

“You pledged to listen to the community,” Mayer told the board. “You said you were eager to hear solutions from this task force. What should become abundantly clear tonight is that this task force has not once discussed solutions. Community voices are being silenced. We aren’t given the chance to question anything ... We were promised community-led, and we got district-led.”

Farley said during the meeting that he expects to get into possible solutions as the task force enters the home stretch.

“What’s happened a couple of times is that suggestions have come up, ‘Why don’t you do X, Y, and Z,’” Farley said. “In reality, the district had already attempted to do X, Y and Z, and it didn’t make a difference in terms of enrollment. At the last meeting, there was a lot of discussion about energy conservation and initiating some program to save money from the escalating energy costs. When the committee heard the unbelievable number of things you’ve done over the last 10 years on that topic, it was clear from getting that data that there wasn’t anything else to do.”

Keeley Pratt, a Village View parent, said after Thursday’s meeting that she had made a recommendation about solar panels at the last task force meeting and disagreed with Farley’s assertion.

“I was immediately shot down,” she said. “[It’s not just about] buying solar panels. What about renting our roofs to solar panels? What about leasing them? I was completely shut down, [and they told me] ‘We’ve already looked into it.’ Everybody sitting there was like, ‘Why was I shut down so much? Why not go out into the wide world and see if there are any new opportunities?’”

Alissa Nieto makes public comments during Thursday night’s special meeting.

(Matt Szabo)

Meanwhile, the district continues modernizing some of its other schools using funds from the $169-million Measure R bond passed in 2016. Star View Elementary School in Westminster was the most recent site to be modernized, with Mesa View Middle School in Huntington Beach improvements coming next.

Jenny Wildvank is a Village View special education parent who attended Thursday’s meeting and also sits on the task force. Her first-grade daughter, Dahlia, one of her two children at the school, has been diagnosed with a very rare genetic disorder.

Wildvank said only a handful of district parents like herself have been at any meeting, which has been frustrating.

“Every idea has been directly countered, ‘No, that wouldn’t work,’” she said. “That was shocking to our little group of parents at last week’s meeting. A lot of us were like, then why are we here?”

Still, she said she hoped Thursday’s special meeting represented a step in the right direction.

“I think the board kind of checked them, in a way,” Wildvank said. “President Singer, her quote at the task force was, ‘Go back to the drawing board.’ We were all clear on what the board wanted from us, and it seemed like the district wasn’t, or was trying to make a narration to lead us a different way ... I think going forward they’ll be more open because they know it’s needed and it’s what was really asked for.”