Trustees OK Desegregation Plan : Education: A school closure, magnet programs and redrawn boundaries are intended to improve the ratio of minorities.

HUNTINGTON BEACH — Capping more than a year of study and debate, the Ocean View School District Board of Trustees on Tuesday unanimously adopted a sweeping desegregation plan that will close one largely Latino school and add special programs to another in an effort to attract more Anglo students.

The desegregation plan that trustees approved Tuesday night aims to correct racially segregated student populations at Crest View and Oak View Elementary schools while improving the ethnic balance among schools districtwide.

Sixty-seven percent of Crest View’s seventh- and eighth-grade students are members of ethnic minorities, and Oak View has a minority population of 89%, according to recent district figures. Districtwide, 30% of 8,600 students are members of ethnic minorities.

Under the desegregation plan, scheduled to go into effect in September, 1992, two magnet programs will be established at Oak View School to attract more Anglo students to that predominantly Latino school. Oak View’s enrollment boundaries will be sharply reduced, effectively forcing out students to make room for the incoming students.

Any student at a district school may apply for the so-called Enrichment Magnet Program. However, since the plan is specifically designed to attract more Anglo students to Oak View, district officials said that Anglo applicants will be favored over other students for the program.

Despite that element of the plan--which district officials have admitted is inherently discriminatory--it is widely supported by Latino and Vietnamese parents and activists in the district, who said they believe the short-term drawback is necessary to achieve long-term integration. The plan, which originally stirred heated controversy in the district, met virtually no opposition from the audience at Tuesday’s meeting.

Trustees will set the school’s new boundaries at their June 4 meeting, when they are scheduled to approve a comprehensive plan including both desegregation and grade-level reconfiguration.

Neither the state nor the federal government has mandated Ocean View to correct its segregation problem. However, the school board agreed last year to develop a racial integration plan before it is ordered to do so.

“I feel certain this plan will offer excellent educational opportunities for all the children in our district,” trustee Sheila Marcus said. “And as a human being, I feel proud that we’re doing this because we feel it’s the right thing to do, not because we were ordered to do it.”

One of the Oak View magnet programs, for first- through fifth-graders, will offer electives not available at the district’s other schools. The board has not yet determined which electives will be offered through the program, which initially will include 125 students.

A “preppie” magnet program will also be offered at Oak View for pre-kindergarten students. That program, which officials expect to draw 50 to 75 students, is designed for parents who want their children to have a year’s education before beginning kindergarten. Anglo students will similarly be favored for the preppie program.

The plan calls for Crest View to close and its kindergarten- through sixth-grade students to be transferred to neighboring Lake View School. Crest View’s seventh- and eighth-grade students will be assigned to other nearby schools, which will help balance the racial makeup at those sites.

At Oak View, in addition to the boundary change, the district will encourage the school’s Latino students to transfer to other schools.