School Closure Committee Highlights Site Efficiency

After a month of studying school budgets, the Fountain Valley School District's special school boundary and closure committee graduated Tuesday night to talk of enrollment figures and efficiency of school sites.

The 19-member advisory committee was formed to assess the potential need for school closures in the district and present recommendations to the school board by September. Tuesday night's meeting focused largely on two reports: one regarding enrollment projections and another examining how efficiently Fountain Valley's elementary schools are being used.

The latter received much of the attention and raised eyebrows of many of the committee's members. Assistant Superintendent for Business Services Steve McMahon presented a side-by-side comparison that showed the school site utilization rate for each school in the Fountain Valley School District, the Huntington Beach School District and the Ocean View School District. Using a formula that included number of classrooms, physical school acreage, maximum enrollment, current enrollment and average class size, Fountain Valley's elementary schools as a whole were found to be operating at 56.9 percent, compared with 65.1 percent and 77.7 percent respectively for Huntington Beach and Ocean View.

"Whether it's meaningful or not on an individual basis, it is meaningful on a district-wide basis," McMahon said. "These are the kinds of the thing we can do with averages. Whether that means anything to you or not, I can't tell you how to think about that.... It does lend a little bit of credence to the argument that we could be a little more efficient. Other surrounding districts are able to utilize what they have."

While some members of the committee seemed to agree that the utilization numbers made closing a school more attractive—talk of closing more than one was discussed at one point—Alan Gandall wondered if reaching out to parents of students from surrounding areas like Santa Ana and Garden Grove, many of whom are already interesting in sending their kids to Fountain Valley schools, could help the schools be more efficient.

"It's not polictially correct to wave a sign at the border that says, 'Come to school here,' " McMahon said in response. "We're at the mercy of word of mouth. We just have to keep doing a great job."

McMahon added that adding more students skirts a fine line when it comes to solving the district's budget problems because adding those students creates a need to add more teachers.

"We could get 100 more kids here; we'd need to hire three more teachers," he said. "So [the amount of money saved] isn't as much. That's what it keeps coming down to. We don't see that as a long-term solution. But we understand that there are different points of view."

Michael Waldinger, a teacher at Moiola Elementary, voiced on of those points of view, saying that the quality of education provided by Fountain Valley schools and reflected in high test scores and other criteria should outweigh simple percentages. He added that the estimated $375,000 to $400,000 that would be saved by closing a school is around 1 percent of the district's $40 million operating budget.

"I like Fountain Valley being a people-friendly place," he said.

McMahon assured the committee that there was no need for a consensus on the school closure issue, and that all opinions would be reflected in the final report sent to the school board.

The committee spent the final 15 minutes of the meeting split up into small groups, each of which was asked to list the pros and cons of closing a school. Each group will report its findings at the committee's next meeting on May 10.