New Vote on School Boundaries Expected

Accused of violating the state’s open meetings law, the Conejo Valley school board probably will vote again in January on attendance boundaries for the Lang Ranch Elementary School.

“I’m pretty sure we’re going to do it for Jan. 13,” school board President Dolores Didio said Wednesday.

The Conejo Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees decided Dec. 9 to turn Lang Ranch Elementary into the district’s first kindergarten through fifth-grade school, thus making room for the hundreds of children from homes previously excluded from the attendance boundary proposals.

The decision pleased these homeowners, but opened up another controversy, as the item was not specifically listed on the meeting agenda.

Didio played down the fact that earlier this week, an angry parent fired off a letter, threatening to sue trustees for possibly violating the state’s Brown Act.

Instead, Didio said trustees are interested in a new meeting to clear up certain issues.

“We’re doing this basically to clarify the Tamara tract,” Didio said, referring to a small enclave of homes near Lang Ranch Elementary that was not included in the attendance boundary.

The board discussed, but did not make clear last week, what would happen to these homes, although trustees intend to give the development first priority to attend the new school, Didio said.

The idea of a new meeting bothered Selene Carr, a parent who says she fears that people who oppose forcing sixth-graders to attend middle school will fill up the meeting.

She likes the K-5 plan and wants to be assured that her home won’t be cut out of any new vote.

“Now I’m going to have to go around and put up more fliers to get my neighbors out again,” she said. For the last two board meetings, Carr said, she copied 300 fliers and stuffed them in envelopes to get the word out.

But plans for a new meeting pleased trustee Elaine McKearn, the lone dissenter on the K-5 plan. She prefers that parents have a choice of where to send their children: elementary or middle school.

More important, she said, trustees have an obligation to be clear about what is posted on an agenda.

“We need to keep everything upfront,” she said.