Parents’ Group Sues to Keep School Open

SANTA ANA â€”  A group of parents seeking to stop the closing of Fountain Valley Elementary School has filed suit against the school district, alleging that its Board of Trustees voted to close the school without a proper environmental impact study.

The Future Education Protection Committee, a group of about 40 parents from the district opposed to the closing, seeks a permanent injunction to halt the closing of the school at 17911 Bushard St. They argue that the board’s decision was made without proper consideration of the safety of the pupils and the impact it would have on other schools.

District officials “didn’t listen to anything and anybody,� said Candace Doyle, the committee’s treasurer, who has two children at the school.

The suit was filed here Monday in Orange County Superior Court, and a hearing has yet to be scheduled.

“When you close a school, you’re changing all the (other) schools too,� said Allen Brandt, an attorney for the committee. “It’s a loss to everyone in Fountain Valley, not just the parents.�

After an emotionally charged meeting, the school board voted 4-1 on Feb. 8 to close the school, the oldest elementary school in the city, because of declining enrollment in the district.

Board members say a school must be closed this year to compensate for how much money the district will not get from the state because of dwindling enrollment. They argue that it does not make sense to keep the 302-pupil school open, because of high overhead.

“You can’t have business as usual when you lose your client base,� said Ruben L. Ingram, the district’s superintendent.

The district has had a steady enrollment decline for the past 10 years. Seven schools have been closed in the area since 1979.

Some parents have argued at hearings that the closing will crowd other schools, cause more traffic congestion, force the cancellation of many programs because of less classroom space and result in a decline in the area’s property values.

Ingram called the suit a “last- ditch effort� to keep the school open.

Brandt argued that the closing of the school is part of an overall plan to restructure the district and create higher-enrollment magnet schools. Such a plan, he said, requires a complete environmental study.

But Ingram said the district has no such plans and emphasized that the district did prepare an environmental report. The plaintiffs consider the impact report incomplete and biased.

The lawsuit contends that the decision was made even though “there are other schools within the district with smaller pupil populations, and district and other studies show an increased population in the county.�

But Ingram said that district projections continue to show a steady decline and that the size of the school’s population was not the sole basis for the board’s decision.

The board’s decision means that the school’s pupils will be transferred to three other schools, whichever one is one mile from their home or nearer, district officials said.

But some parents have said that they measured the distances, and their children will have to travel more than a mile to school.

The plaintiffs also allege that Roch Courreges, one of the three schools, is near power lines that they deem potentially dangerous.

The plaintiffs said the proximity of the power lines to the school violates state Department of Education site planning guidelines and poses a health risk because of the “known link between the exposure to electromagnetic fields and the increased incidence of childhood leukemia and brain tumors.�

But Ingram said state health officials have investigated the site and found “no real scientific evidence� that the power lines pose a health risk to children.