Schools May Reopen to Meet Rising Enrollment

In Simi Valley they shuttered Arroyo, Arcane, Bellwood and Walnut Grove. In the Conejo Valley, they closed Horizon Hills, Waverly and Triunfo. In Ventura they vacated the Avenue and Washington schools.

When enrollment plummeted during the recession, three of the county’s larger school districts found themselves with too few students and too many elementary schools.

So they shut them down in 1982 and 1983 and leased them out--to churches, preschools, nonprofit groups, offices and private schools.

But circumstances change. The same school systems are scrambling now to find space for two welcome additions: the extra classes created by a popular state initiative to shrink class size and the surge of new students caused by the so-called “baby boom echo.”

And they are looking to the closed campuses as a possible solution.

But it’s not as simple as it seems. There are the financial concerns: the income lost from leasing out the buildings, the cost of renovating structures that may have fallen into disrepair and the annual expense of a principal, custodial staff and utility bills.

Then there are the political considerations: whether school board trustees--and more important, parents--would rather see students moved into portable classrooms at existing schools or set up on another campus.

Thousand Oaks is leaning more toward purchasing about 40 portable classrooms rather than reopen a closed school--two of which are used for other school district functions while the third is leased to the private Carden School.

“It’s just more cost-effective for us to expand existing elementary campuses and keep the administrative costs down through the addition of portables,” Supt. Jerry Gross said.

But a candidate in this fall’s school board election, Deborah Lorier, argued that the school district should take advantage of the buildings it owns.

“It would be better for the children to have regular classrooms rather than portable trailers,” Lorier said. “Why not reclaim those [closed] facilities. If the only issue is money, let’s put our heads together and come up with a way to finance it.”

Ventura school officials are examining both Avenue and Washington schools in the effort to accommodate smaller classes for first- and second-graders and deal with increased enrollment.

In Simi Valley, trustees will be looking “very seriously” at reopening at least one closed school after a boundary study is finished this winter, said interim Supt. Robert Purvis. Last year, even before the onset of class size reduction, trustees decided to give notice to the schools and companies leasing Simi Valley schools because of anticipated growth.

“Someday, all of them will probably be reopened if we continue to grow at 1.5% to 2% a year,” Purvis said.

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Graced with 50 open classrooms in junior high schools and existing portable classrooms, Simi Valley could continue to implement class size reduction in first and second grades next year without ordering portable classrooms or reopening a school, said Dave Kanthak, assistant superintendent for business services. But reducing classes in a third grade, as many trustees have proposed, would take finding another 13 to 15 classrooms somewhere.

“It’s not a real simple solution,” Purvis said. “There’s a considerable amount of work involved in reopening a closed school.”

For starters, there is the money.

Off the top, the Simi Valley Unified School District would lose lease money if schools were reopened. Among them, the four closed campuses bring in almost $283,000 in annual income for the 18,896-student district.

To ready a shuttered school for public use again, school districts examine and repair antiquated heating, cooling and ventilation systems, replace ramshackle roofs and resurface cracked playgrounds.

Door handles, locks and bathrooms also receive scrutiny with the advent of the Americans with Disabilities Act standards.

Those changes can add up to big bucks, Kanthak said.

Take the 500-capacity Arroyo school--Simi’s most likely candidate for reopening because of its good condition and a lease that runs out before school starts next fall. “We figure it would take eight months” to prepare Arroyo, he said.

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For the repairs and renovations, it would cost a minimum of $800,000 to open Arroyo if maintenance workers manage to prolong the life of the aged heating and cooling system, Kanthak said. If that system is replaced, opening costs would reach $1.5 million. Add another $300,000 for annual operating costs--electricity and salaries for a principal, office manager and custodian.

At the other end of the closed school spectrum is Bellwood, now leased out for $61,878 annually to a private preschool. It is all but useless as a public school, Kanthak said.

“Bellwood is in very bad shape,” he said. “We’ve been told by some construction management people that at Bellwood it would be cheaper to tear it down and build a new [school]” than to make repairs.

In addition to possibly reopening a school, Simi Valley trustees can expect the September 1998 opening of the Wood Ranch elementary school to ease much crowding. As they consider facilities options in January, another possibility is bumping sixth-graders into middle schools to make room in the elementary grades. Less likely possibilities include a shift to year-round schooling or a change to staggered student schedules.

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“It goes from zero dollars if you move the middle school kids up to $900,000 if you buy portables to $1.5 million--plus another $300,000 annually--if you open Arroyo,” Kanthak said. By contrast, building a new elementary school costs at least $6 million.

Regardless of which option is chosen, Simi Valley won’t be getting a penny of the $200 million the state set aside to help school districts find more space for class size reduction. In the funding process the state gave priority to school districts that did not have open classrooms. Simi Valley was penalized for having four closed schools and other empty rooms in junior highs.

The Conejo Valley Unified School District, on the other hand, can expect at least $425,000 from the state for class size reduction facilities, because two of its three closed schools are used for public schooling.

The Waverly site now houses a popular adult school, which offers classes in English as a second language, computers, parenting, emergency medical training and more to about 9,000 people a year. “It would be close to impossible to close it,” Gross said.

The Horizon Hills campus is also run by the adult school. Mommy-and-me classes in child development are offered at the site, as are some special education programs.

The other school is Triunfo, leased out for $180,000 annually to the private Carden School.

Given the income generated by leasing Triunfo and the widespread popularity of the programs at the other two sites, it would be unpopular and pricey for the 18,574-student district to reopen a closed school, Gross said.

“What do you do with the special education classes at Horizon Hills?” he asked. “What about the 600 [kids] in the preschool classes? What do we do with those kids and these really valuable services?”

What’s more, Thousand Oaks school officials estimate that reopening a closed school would cost at least $250,000 annually for principal, office manager and custodian salaries plus utilities. If the school district buys 39 bungalows to fit the smaller classes, it will amount to a one-time cost of $2.7 million, said Sean G. Corrigan, the district’s director of planning and facilities.

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But the ultimate arbiter of facilities decisions is the school board. Trustee Mildred Lynch said it would be impractical to reopen the closed schools.

Triunfo would require too much work, she said. Horizon Hills doesn’t have the necessary parking to reopen as an elementary school. And Waverly? “That’s one thing that operates in the black,” she explained.

Lorier, a homemaker and businesswoman, made the reopening of closed schools a campaign issue in her bid for school board this fall. She advocates relocating the adult school from the Waverly campus, reclaiming the Triunfo site and adding kindergarten through third grade to the Horizon Hills site to create a fundamental school, which emphasizes reading, writing and arithmetic.

It seems counterintuitive to buy portable classrooms, she said, when the district already has closed schools.

Facilities director Corrigan said reopening the closed schools would not create any more space; it would just reshuffle the location of existing programs. “We don’t have any closed, empty buildings,” he said. Instead, the district plan to accommodate more and smaller classes includes moving partition walls, buying bungalows and hastening the construction of a Lang Ranch school.

The Ventura Unified district has a committee studying how best to deal with school crowding. By mid-December the long-term planning committee may be ready to present the school board with a recommendation list that includes which schools to reopen.

The 16,760-student district may use the vacated Avenue School, currently leased to the Assn. of Retarded Citizens, as it continues to reduce class sizes. The school district has already reduced all its first-grade classes to 20 students and plans to finish shrinking all second-grade classes by September.

While the cost of reopening Avenue School is uncertain, the campus could fit 10 classes and portables, said Jorge Gutierrez, director of facilities and maintenance.

Another option involves the closed Washington School on MacMillan Avenue--which leases one bungalow to the California Indian Education Center. District officials are weighing the merits of reopening, leasing out or selling the school, which sits on five acres. The money from the sale or lease could be put toward paying for new classrooms elsewhere.

Over the years, vandals have broken the school windows and sprayed graffiti on the walls.

Neighbors in the midtown area are trying to pressure district officials into reopening the Washington School, which was constructed in 1924. District officials plan to have an engineer determine the best use for the building.

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School Cost Considerations

Three unified school districts--Simi Valley, Conejo Valley and Ventura--are considering reopening elementary schools closed during an enrollment drop in the early 1980s. Most of the schools are leased to outside groups and bring in rent. In Thousand Oaks, two are used for the district’s adult and special education classes. Beyond the numbers listed below, reopening each school costs an additional $250,000 to $300,000 a year for utilities and salaries for a principal, office manager and custodian.

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School Opened Closed Capacity Annual rent SIMI VALLEY Arroyo 1962 1983 500 $111,451 Arcane 1962 1983 528 $51,472 Bellwood 1964 1983 587 $61,878 Walnut Grove 1964 1983 558 $58,004 CONEJO VALLEY Horizon Hills 1967 1983 419 none Triunfo 1976 1983 526 $180,000 Waverly 1960 1983 523 none VENTURA Avenue 1942 1982 300 $53,004 Washington 1925 1983 420 $2,323

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Source: School district reports and estimates