H.B. City School District OKs expedited plan to close a school and curb out-of-district student transfers

Drastic changes appear to be on the horizon for the Huntington Beach City School District, with the board of trustees voting to expedite the process for a long-discussed school closure, severely curb out-of-district student transfers and cut some teaching staff.

Trustees hope the action will resolve the district’s budget woes while maintaining resources and programs that students and families want to keep. The district anticipates almost $7 million in budget cuts for the 2020-21 school year.

During a five-hour meeting Tuesday night, the board narrowly approved the motion 3-2, with President Ann Sullivan and trustee Paul Morrow dissenting.

The trustees directed staff to begin planning for the next school year with a campus closure. They voted to form a committee with the expectation to work on an expedited schedule to identify a school for closure by June.

A previous committee recommended last year that no school be shuttered.

Under the latest board action, teacher layoffs will coincide with anticipated enrollment, pending the school closure, but current student-to-teacher ratios would be preserved. The ratios vary by school and grade level.

The board hasn’t formally discussed a particular school to close, and the district has said no decisions have been made on which sites could be studied for possible closure and sale. However, some community members have drawn their own conclusions, stoking anxiety and pitting communities against one another.

Peterson Elementary School at 20661 Farnsworth Lane has been the subject of much of the talk.

Students participated in public comments Tuesday, including groups of young girls toting an inflatable rainbow-colored dolphin representing the Peterson Elementary mascot.

“My life would be ruined if you closed this beloved school,” Peterson student Brooke Stone said.

An online petition that parents started in opposition to closing the school had collected more than 3,300 signatures as of Thursday afternoon.

“The district does not want to close a school that’s already been modernized,” according to the petition, leaving some parents to believe Peterson is a likely candidate for closure, with the land eventually sold.

Transfer students

The district announced two weeks ago that it would immediately stop accepting student transfers from outside as well as within the district while also postponing annual kindergarten orientations. Reducing the number of transfer students would mean paying for fewer resources while maintaining programs.

The board decided Tuesday to allow current out-of-district transfer students entering fifth and eighth grades in the coming fall to remain at their schools. Transfer students entering middle school the following year would have to leave the district. Huntington Beach City has only elementary and middle schools.

All other out-of-district transfers will need to leave the district for the 2020-21 school year.

The district currently has more than 800 transfer students from outside its boundaries enrolled in its nine schools.

Student transfers within the district will be able to continue as enrollment space allows. About 20% of students who live within district boundaries attend a school other than the one associated with their address.

An incentive for quick action is that schools with declining enrollment receive state funding based on the number of students enrolled in April of the previous school year. The lower the enrollment, the more excess funding there will be that can make up some of the anticipated deficit.

Trustee Shari Kowalke said taking an extra year to study the issue would only continue anxiety in the community and put off the inevitable.

Morrow and Sullivan said they felt a sense of duty to families who had been invited to enroll in Huntington Beach City schools, and they wanted to hold off on pushing students out of the district.

Kowalke replied that “we are responsible to the people in our district. ... In making [program] cuts we say we don’t value the people who live in our district.”

On the prospect of transfer students returning to their former districts, Kowalke said: “Those are not ill-fitting schools. There are great schools and are ready to welcome them back.”

Finances

The district is working to formulate a budget that retains the minimum 3% reserve required by state law to account for economic uncertainties, keep its budget certified and avoid county scrutiny of the district’s solvency.

Huntington Beach City ended the 2018-19 fiscal year in the black but faces “a challenging fiscal environment [amid] declining enrollment and only small increases in funding,” according to a December financial report.

According to data collected in October, enrollment had dropped to 6,452, and the district was expected to lose 200 more students over the next two years, the district said.

“We’ve lost [state] funding ... because we don’t have as many kids,” district spokesman John Ashby said earlier this month. “It’s required right now that we take a look at where our spending is.”

The district projects that state aid will drop more than $2.6 million between the 2020-21 and 2021-22 budget years — from $7.17 million to $4.49 million — while funding from property taxes is expected to rise only by about $256,000, according to a staff presentation from a study session last week.

At the study session, district staff presented two fiscal stability plans that considered drastic cuts in staffing, student transfer contracts and a school closure vs. postponing those actions and instead cutting academic resources and programming over the next two years.

On Tuesday, Supt. Greg Haulke and staff shared a third plan that he called a “blend” of the previous ones.

“The [new] fiscal stabilization plan was put together very rapidly, in one week’s time after two study sessions ... after an interim plan [and] a second plan that was even more Draconian than the first to make the first one look better,” said Jay Hudson, a district parent who serves on the city of Huntington Beach Finance Commission.

“Every single one of us seems to want to put kids first ... we are just not clear on the line of reasoning that helped us arrive at this fiscal stability plan,” said Brett Potts, a father of three students in the Huntington Beach City district.

Potts suggested gathering more-detailed options before making a decision and said the “revenue projection doesn’t look right.”

“I’m an investment banker, I get the projections — sometimes they are a ... guess,” Potts said. “But we can narrow this down a little bit. ... Slow it down a touch.”

A mother lobbied for music programs and played a song called “Music Sets Me Free” that her daughter had recorded and put online.

Lori Kamola, a parent of twin third-graders at Smith Elementary School, cautioned against making cuts to programs such as music and mental health services.

“I think sometimes the better choice for the greater good is that harder choice to make. Keep the programs,” Kamola said. “Kids ... can’t self-help through mental health and behavior needs. They can’t self-teach through musical programming.”

“With suicide rates on the rise with students more depressed and stressed than ever, we need these programs in our schools,” Kamola added.

A study session on creating the committee on the school closure is scheduled for 6 p.m. Feb. 11 at the district office, 8750 Dorsett Drive.

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