OAK PARK : Board OKs Building Elementary School

School officials in Oak Park have decided to build a new kindergarten through fifth-grade school, settling a controversy that has simmered in the community since the fall.

The board of the Oak Park Unified School District voted 5 to 0 Tuesday to build a third elementary school to ease crowding at the district’s two existing elementary schools.

The board then voted 4 to 1 to locate the new school on Rockfield Street near Lindero Canyon Road. School officials said they hope that the school will be completed by the fall of 1993.

The decision ended a controversy in which some parents argued that the district should build an early childhood education center rather than another elementary school.

They maintained that a school for preschool and kindergarten children, and possibly including first or second grade, could ease crowding at the other elementary schools without requiring that the district redraw school boundaries, board member Jim Kalember said.

But Kalember said a committee of parents and community members eventually recommended against the idea.

Board President Pat Kavulic cast the dissenting vote against locating the school on Rockfield Street. Kavulic said Thursday that she favored putting the school in a building complex on Conifer Street.

“More children could walk to school if that were the chosen site,” Kavulic said.