This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press April
24, 2001.
By JANNISE JOHNSON
Valley Press Staff Writer
LANCASTER - School boundaries in the Westside Union School District won't change next year despite the need to ease overcrowding on the district's 10 campuses.
Westside trustees unanimously voted April 17 to delay changing school boundaries while they examine other options to relieve overcrowding at their schools.
Allan Sacks, district superintendent, said Monday the board voted to keep the boundaries in place, which should calm some community members' fears that children who live within walking distance of Joe Walker and Hillview middle schools might have to be bused to other campuses up to seven miles from their homes.
Current boundaries will remain fixed until the end of the next school year in June 2002.
Joe Walker Middle and Hillview Elementary schools are two of the district's most overcrowded campuses.
Hillview Middle School's population is now at 1,131, 100 more students than at the same time last year. The school was originally built to house about 850 students.
Joe Walker, 5632 West Ave. L-8 in Lancaster, has 974 students. It was originally built to house 720 seventh- and eighth-graders.
Instead of changing boundaries or converting to a multi-track schedule, Sacks said district administrators will continue studying both options until Nov. 1, when they will present their findings to the board of trustees for a final decision.
In the meantime, he said, the district will put a few less dramatic changes in effect for the duration of this and the next school year.
Students from the City Ranch Housing Development will attend Leona Valley Elementary School. The development is between 20th and 40th streets west, bordered by Elizabeth Lake Road on the south and by Avenue S on the north.
The district also won't allow any more intradistrict transfers to the most overcrowded schools. Those are transfers from one district campus to another.
Administrators also will increase efforts to locate what are known as "boundary jumpers." These are students who live outside the boundaries of the most overcrowded schools but attend a campus without authorization.
Sacks said siblings of students who are not already attending Hillview or Rancho Vista Elementary schools will have to attend less crowded schools.
The district also will gather information through different committees made up of community members, Sacks explained. There is a facilities committee, a development committee, a multi-track committee and a committee devoted to studying city-developer relations.
These short-term solutions, Sacks said, will give officials and the board breathing room to decide on the best course of action. It also allows the board more time to hear from as many district parents as possible.
"It is an opportunity for us to look at some long-range planning," he said.
When asked if these short-term solutions aren't just a temporary delay for the board's having to make a hard decision, board President Scott Gmur said, "That's not necessarily so. If we're going to consider multitrack, then we have to give parents a year notification."
While Gmur couldn't say specifically when the board would make a final decision to either convert to multitrack or bus students from the most crowded schools to the least overcrowded, he did say a decision might be made sometime this fall.
This decision comes after a series of meetings in recent months that attracted large crowds of parents concerned about having their children bused to other schools.
Some parents have speculated that the district is attempting to get the community to buy into the idea of multitrack by holding up the less palatable option of busing some students out of their area.
Sacks said that is just not true.
"That's not the purpose at all," he said. "The issue is what we can do to address our housing needs."
During an earlier meeting Gmur said it would cost $250,000 per year to set in place a busing program, and that's money that won't go to educational programs or teacher and classified pay raises.
Another option being considered is adding portable classrooms to Hillview's campus.