Old news story published earlier this year in the
OC Register by Jordan Graham:
As more and more people are moving to Irvine ? many wanting to enroll their children in the community's superb schools ? the school district is grappling with the challenge of keeping pace with the population growth.
With plans to open seven schools in the next eight years, Irvine Unified School District officials are considering a handful of strategies to keep schools from becoming overcrowded as new families move to recently developed neighborhoods.
By the end of 2020, the city is projected to gain more than 20,000 homes and 40,000 new residents. By the end of 2016, about 8,500 new students are projected to enter the district ? a 30 percent increase.
At an April 9 facilities study session, district staff and Board of Education members discussed options for pre-empting this predicament through blends of adding portable classrooms, opening an interim school and balancing enrollment by transporting new students to schools outside of their neighborhood.
THREE OPTIONS PRESENTED
Though no binding decisions were made at the study session, school board members were presented with three options to alleviate Irvine Unified's interim capacity dilemma.
Board members Sharon Wallin, Paul Bokota and Lauren Brooks cast their support for Option A, a scenario in which the district would place more portable classrooms at Stonegate and Woodbury elementary schools in 2013 to increase student capacity, then remove these portable structures in 2014 while directing new students to an interim school (located north of Irvine Boulevard and Jeffrey Road).
Board President Gavin Huntley-Fenner and board member Michael Parham backed Option B, which would overflow new Stonegate village students in 2013 to three elementary schools two to three miles away, then open the interim school in 2014.
Under both options, the interim school would be replaced by a newly constructed building in 2015.
No board members openly support Option C, which would add portable classrooms to Stonegate and Woodbury in 2013, then maintain this increased capacity while overflowing to other neighborhood schools in 2014.
PACKED SCHOOLS OR DISPLACED STUDENTS
One of the fundamental questions the dilemma generates is whether it is better to keep students in a densely populated neighborhood school or send them to schools farther from their homes.
If the board opted to add more portable classrooms to Stonegate, district officials project the school's population would swell to 1,172 students by the beginning of next school year. That would mean Stonegate's population would be 472 students over the district's targeted average elementary school enrollment, 272 over the maximum allowed for elementary schools with portable classrooms and 172 over the population the district allows for during "peak enrollment." ("That's the size of a small liberal arts college," one school administrator commented.)
Though both options eventually would require incoming students from new families to attend a school outside of their neighborhood, the majority of school board members supported temporarily increasing student populations so as many students as possible could attend their local elementary school.
"I think that it is easier for the students and the families," Wallin said. "I have faith in our principals that with additional support they can handle the numbers."
"You're impacting people's homes and people's children," Bokota said, supporting his choice to add more portable classrooms.
Stonegate Principal Stan Machesky also supported Option A, saying that his school could handle the temporary population increase with proper administrative support.
But Huntley-Fenner said portable classrooms would not solve all capacity issues, pointing out that schools have a set amount of playground equipment, library space and other shared facilities. He would prefer a blend of options A and B, he said, balancing the pros and cons of each option.
NO LOCAL SCHOOL FOR SOME NEW FAMILIES
Regardless of which option is chosen, in any foreseeable future, some new Irvine families won't be able to send their children to their local elementary school.
School board members said that a district policy allowing students who start at a given Irvine school to continue there, even when attendance boundaries change, could compound this effect if displaced students opt to stay at schools outside of their neighborhood.
While soon-to-be Stonegate neighborhood families aren't around to weigh in, current Stonegate Elementary parents were divided on whether they would have been unhappy sending their children to a different school.
"I don't think it's a big deal at all," said Clarissa Saiz, mother of two Stonegate students. "We just moved from Orange. I would be happy with any school in Irvine."
Napa Gavin, mother of a third-grade girl and a fifth-grade boy, recently bought an unfinished Stonegate house and is living in an apartment outside the neighborhood while she waits for her home to be completed.
"If I had a house here and my kids had to go somewhere else, I would be a bit disappointed," Gavin said. "I wouldn't move here. I would buy a house that is close to the school that (they) go to because I want my kids to eventually bike and walk to school."
An Irvine Co. representative said that the issue was not problematic.
Mike LeBlanc, senior vice president of entitlement for the Irvine Co., said that the real estate company's mitigation agreement with the school district guarantees funding for the construction of schools as Irvine's population grows, but added that student dislocation can be necessary until the new buildings are erected.
"It doesn't really create a major problem at all for us and the expectations our families have," LeBlanc said.
"Irrespective of the specific physical location of the school," he said later, "you still have that educational community coming together. Part of the attribute of a planned community is having a local school, but part of that is also not necessarily the physical structure, but the enjoyment in the community in that educational environment. So they'll stay together, and in a very short time frame, in two years, they'll be in a brand-new school enjoying the state-of-the-art amenities that school will afford them."
Shortly after the April 9 meeting, letters were sent out to Stonegate and Woodbury elementary school parents, informing them of the district's plans and options.
DISTRICT HAS TOOLS, FUNDS TO BE FLEXIBLE
School districts should be built to flex and contract, Huntley-Fenner said, and unlike some other California school districts, Irvine Unified is fortunate to have the tools to adapt.
"Although Irvine has challenges, we have access to a full set of tools that we can use to solve these problems," Huntley-Fenner said. "We have money and developer capacity to build schools. We have capacity within our district, where we can move children. We've got staff that is pretty skilled in working with these demographic changes because the district has been growing for many years now."
The school board plans to continue discussions on interim capacity issues at its May 7 meeting. Stonegate Elementary will host a meeting tonight in the school's multipurpose room to allow the public to further discuss the plans.
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