Delay in Reopening of School Draws Fire

Closed-down Victoria Elementary School in Costa Mesa may not yet be ready to hold classes, but a neighborhood parents group is already organized and ready to take on the school board to fight for the school to open in fall as planned.

The school had been scheduled to open its doors for the 1992-93 school year, but the start date was postponed because needed funds are not available.

Parents, however, say they do not agree with the one-year delay, and plan to continue pressing the board to keep to the schedule.

“We have waited patiently for two years for our school to open,” Ralph Ronquillo, president of the Victoria School Neighborhood Parents Assn., told the school board last week.

“We’ve been counting on it,” he said. “Now, instead of a school of our own . . . we are getting another interim plan.”

About 400 students live near the locked-up Victoria School and attend other schools around town.

Parents of those children have told of the hassle of driving the students to nearby schools only to come home at the end of the day to a closed school next door.

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District had been planning to open the school in fall to handle the increase in elementary school enrollment. During the past five years, elementary school enrollment has grown by 500 students annually.

The school district was counting on receiving $4.6 million from leasing property to the water district for a reservoir. However, the reservoir project has been stalled, so the money will not be coming immediately.

An estimated $2 million is needed to open the school, and the delayed funds--coupled with the district’s $3.6-million deficit--will make a fall opening impossible, said Dale Woolley, director of student support and research.

“We obviously can’t spend it if we don’t have it,” said board member Roderick H. MacMillian about the needed funds.

Children who live in the Victoria zone have been attending Adams, California, Pomona, Whittier and Wilson elementary schools.

However, some of those schools have become overcrowded, so the board is considering an interim plan that would shuffle the students to less-crowded schools until Victoria opens.

The board shelved a plan to try to open Victoria midway through next academic year, and said it hopes to open Victoria in fall, 1993.

The board is scheduled to further discuss the interim plan for next school year at its meeting Tuesday.