YORBA LINDA : Panel Urges Changes in School Boundaries

An advisory committee has recommended changes in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District’s attendance boundaries.

In a report to the Board of Trustees, the committee suggested that students living in the Rose Drive and Mabel Paine elementary schools attendance areas be assigned to El Dorado High School, and students in the Linda Vista Elementary School attendance area be assigned to Esperanza High School.

The committee also recommended a pilot program allowing students in those attendance areas to choose among the district’s three high schools for the next four years. Students would be eligible to attend the high school of their choice if space were available, and students living closest to the school would be given preference.

Students who attend a high school other than the one they are assigned to would not be eligible for bus service.

Currently, students from those elementary schools attend Yorba Linda Middle School and then transfer outside of the district to attend Troy High School in Fullerton.

That arrangement was left intact after the old Yorba Linda School District merged with the Placentia Unified School District in 1989. But last year an agreement was reached with Fullerton Joint Union High School District that will keep the Yorba Linda students in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District.

The district has been grappling with the issue of where those students will attend high school.

Although students already enrolled at Troy will continue there, the 217 eighth-grade students currently enrolled at Yorba Linda Middle School can choose between Troy and a district high school in September. Subsequent eighth-graders will enroll at district high schools only.

Mike Bailey, director of facilities and planning, said the district has not estimated how many of the Yorba Linda eighth-grade students will choose a district high school. But as future eighth-grade classes feed into district high schools, the net increase in students could reach 700 in four years.

The advisory committee, made up of 12 parents in the district, has been meeting since last spring and hopes to make its complete recommendation to the district by the end of February.